And this white shirt
with stick figure faces
wrapping around the sleeves
could only be an icebreaker
in an early morning
dream. Your mother says

I need a man’s opinion. I say,
remember the dilapidated white house
with that front porch reduced
to a stoop where your sister lived
her first year of college? That’s how
you know me—I lived there

too. And now (because it’s one
of those unfolding at civil
dawn) your mother drives us
to a farmstead you recognize. I don’t.
A few thousand miles west
of that house. You’re someone’s brother

and still
you rest your hand
over mine as if
to say it’s going to be
okay. I wake before I can
reply, how do you know.