Pat thinks of truth in the misty sequoias
and what bugs do boring into their lovely bark,
Pat thinks of the truth in the atomic battles of the sun
and of all long and lovely earthly benefits,
Pat thinks of truth along the puffy pillows
forgotten in bed whispers made long ago,
Pat thinks of truth and what it means to put
A lonely American flag up on the moon,
Pat thinks of the truth of a body’s pungent
luscious smell before you take a shower,
and the truth of the heavy sexual burning
through the years between human legs,
the truth of older weak legs, finding it
hard to rise sometimes up out of the tub,
and the truth of rosy tasty pesticide apples,
the truth of all the tears in all the beach houses
set back of the dunes on the low beach, but
most of all Pat thinks of brother Rick
and of the pleasured pain he took pulling his
knife from its leather scabbard — that comes
back clear to Pat strangely and too often,
how Rick enjoyed turning and turning
his blade as he lay on his small bed,
catching the blade’s shine in the sun
coming in his childhood bedroom window,
how he enjoyed his slurred skewed words
as he felt his worthlessness, having killed
men overseas to serve his crazy country,
growling through his teeth at his sister.
Pat now in the basement of Rick’s heart
down in the storage area of the store
where she and her family of four lived,
“I could kill you…” he told his sister,
and Pat was not afraid, Pat put out a
loving hand to whisper, “I know, I know.”