Big Brother
The funny thing about roller skates
is how the angular velocity
just dwarfs the RPMs of a bike.
Because the wheels are small, they have to spin
a lot more to go the same distance.
Spinning your wheels, and getting nowhere fast.
My big brother and I shared a pair.
He'd pull me on his bike, we'd go so far,
But we'd always come back home by dark.
He hates his birthday, trips around the sun,
each reminds him of mortality.
But I'm a brat, so every year I call.
What's that? I think I heard a clock tick?
All of the days spin into years too quick.
Brother races through life like he's chased
by demons or fate. He fears he won't do
all he's meant to do before the end.
LOL, I tell him, "you're only twenty-five."
We were born in New Jersey, moved to
Wisconsin, then to Maryland where I stayed.
Brother leaves to find his fortune, love,
or a sign he's made it, to find some peace.
Golden coast of So-Cal, white beaches,
to Hawaii where Mom and Dad were born.
Finds a home in Vegas, and a wife.
Bouncer, scientist, athlete, salesman, father.
Has all that spinning finally paid off?
Keep racing, it'll never be enough.
The world spins, the wheel turns, a spiral
is just a circle that misses its start
each time it goes around. And we miss
each other a little less as years pass.
When we meet, our bond persists, our wheels
still spin in tandem, a bike pulling skates.
We meet for Mom's death. She was the best
of us. How's that for a volta? Spin on.
Birth of his first, Mom's eyes in a babe.
Seems we only meet to bury or birth.
Bye to our Dad, hello to my first.
Life is a revolving door, in and out.
Round and round we go. When will we stop?
Nobody knows, but we'll fall like a top.
Cancer sucks. I think, if only he
had raced less, had listened more, than maybe
he could have kept all his parts. His wife
thinks it's cool to love a bionic man.
They somehow spin out another life.
Why does he feel he's still spinning his wheels?
We meet again to celebrate life.
We hug, we part, and then, he dies. Sepsis.
I miss saying goodbye by an hour.
Spirals can never return to their start.
But somehow he does, dying just two
miles from where he was born in New Jersey.
He closed the circle. Is this closure?
He went fast and in the end got nowhere.
I try to find sense in stanzas, meaning
in this senseless story, spinning on skates
too fast to care, I find myself screaming,
"Did you find purpose, or were you too late?"
I think to call today, rub in your next
lap around the Sun, but the laps don't count
when you are dead, maybe you did know best,
Icarus was always meant to crash down.
Your wife, young children, family, countless friends,
our grief and guilt spirals, we're incomplete,
your story broke, impossible to mend,
and no piece of you will ever know peace.
This sonnet, your story, diminished but true,
It fits to leave it, unfinished