My Brother's Keeper

DIANE GAGE

A helicopter circles my neighborhood, 
slicing the evening air to bits. 
Windows and dishes rattle in the kitchen 
as I chop onions, parsley, sage, 
listening between helicopter visits 
to television voices mourning 
massacred students in Virginia. 
By the time the helicopter quits 
its agitated rounds around whatever 
had attracted its urgency, the TV 
has moved on to the search 
for the world’s oldest flower 
in archives of fossil records. 
Giving up on this squash soup 
being ready in time for dinner 
I warm up leftovers, then keep 
solo vigil at my shrine for lost 
brothers, remembering one who 
drowned slowly in alcohol, & one 
who went to that school in Virginia 
now blooming with shock and sorrow. 
I sit quiet as a rock compressing 
layers of delicate evidence, 
tracings of life long gone.

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