After a Painting by Heather Ryan Kelley
Michael Robins
__________
—for my brother
We might stare, crowding the high,
storybook windows, our worry
told in the pictures of us kids. If I
am six & you’ll be eleven: if a thread
round my little finger at breakfast
or a napkin made honest with a ring.
Already the crack & sudden static
watching TV alone, my lips pressed
along the corner of the screen like petals,
canceled stamps, beaded mercury
from grade school science & scribbled
between the days, all at once, ART.
If counting the marbles & tacks of light
left in a nightstand drawer. If the needle
to the necklace, to our eyes like pearl
when closing them tight, for good measure
imagine a thinning tree: eight, nine, ten…
Ready or not, it was meant as a game,
knuckles down the spine to keep
our posture straight. If I am twelve
& you—no take backs—you’re sixteen,
we’ll be crumbs for a crowny field,
evening spell under which I’m writing.
__________
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Posted in When in Rome: Nov '25 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry