on the way home. A write.

A sibbling phones 
tells me another sibbling
lay's lifeless
in the ITU  That the nurses creep

About slowly
respectfully quiet as if everybody
Is already dead

I think of this sibbling
Iittle brother
half a century ago how mam

said take him with you
to the park the beach out to play
how his presence
Annoyed me    how he would

whine in the company of girls
three years older
how guilt would creep in

for ignoring him disowning him
how I'd fit my gloves around
litttle fingers
on the way home
warm him up    hand him
My last blackjack

I wait for the phonecall 
I know will come
when it does I come to the morgue
It saddens me   gloves I bring

do not fit his large hands
I rub his hands
to warm him on the way home
decades lay
between us like frozen ice
he will not warm 
Is no longer five

a blackjack
finds its way from the pocket
of my winter coat covertly
Into his chalk hand
I hope he'll take with him
the aniseed taste of us

instead.

M