Even

Brother, I love you
Even when, as a boy, you made me
Lift stone to be pinched by crawdads in mountain creeks
rising in cold pools of evening--blood silt summers of our hunt
Even when suffering under the bushes with the spiders and snakes
Just to make you smile in the game we played.
Even when we grew apart I knew you wrapped around the world for a lifetime
And even in your rainiest days, murky and dripping
You came to me, though uncertain of yourself,
With a smile
And only later you cried alone
because you always held your cards.

Even when, certain you would not arrive,
I waited for you at the bus stop in Chinatown
A stranger in strange, dust ridden streets
You appeared from the eternal city, like love unfurling,
Guiding me through the streets
To take me home
Past vendors, past the little men
asking for just one more
past the moon and into the sun
We remembered together the things I had forgotten.


And you loved me
Even when I became so unforgivably angry
When life was no good
And your own days were rugged and stripped
You showed me a man,
Unbroken by others.
(A lighthouse does stand against the breaking tide
Even when there is no one home
Even when its light shines for no one,
When morning feels so far)
On those streets without words, I asked, “when will the universe end, at night?”
“No, at dawn,” you said,
“And the sun will rise
Even at the end of the world”

Even when I was too young to know of Love
I loved you as I love you now-
Unmovable
Stone in water, still unturned from our boyish hands
Rooted
Tree on the hillside-
The one we climbed
Along the forest edge where we grew up
I love you then and now,
As a man
As a man
And forever till ash and night.