For my one and only sister, Naomi

Despite everything, this is a time of abundance –
two assured selves reflecting in our bedroom mirror
with lean faces, yours backed by the sun’s glow
playing in your chestnut hair, late summer
of browns and golds set afire in pastures surrounding
our house. At dusk we climb the last elm in our yard,
not yet succumbed to disease, and perch as high
as we dare to go, waiting for moon and mystery
to make sense of our still-being-wired brains. Without a word
I pass to you the one clove cigarette I have kept in my pocket
for this very moment—a brown secret rolling like a horse in my head
for weeks, landing in your hand as though
with wings. The match striking on bark
makes a tiny fire that for a moment reminds us both
of our father’s dark red hair as the sheriff pushed him
into the cruiser, in the middle of a sun-filled August day,
and after a long bout of rain—and the smoke
you blow toward me rises over leaves just starting
to turn their papery brown. You suck that clove
for all it is worth, and I begin to see
how many things will happen to you
that I no longer get to witness and may never know.
Long after the cigarette is gone you lie under the moon
with a face so lovely and still
that it is impossible to keep from crying.