An Assortment of Siblings

Shared with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #197: Sisters and Brothers. Rather than create something new, I collected together these writings, which already existed. Despite the note of sadness, I wrote the poems to celebrate these people, and their presence in my life.

Dear Denis –

I feel you slipping

out of my life.

Sometimes I forget

I even have a brother

over there in New Zealand,

a country more or less blank

to me: I’ve never visited

and cannot place you there.

Your box of Philosophy journals

moulders under my carport.

The joke statuette your colleagues made

lies on its face in my hall cupboard.

You said to throw it out, but if I do,

will you disappear entirely

out of my memory, except 

as that bright-faced child I knew

with his quirky way of looking at things?

Written April 1990, and published in Small Poems of April, Abalone Press (Three Bridges, Vic.) 1991.

Sister

When my father married your mother

we were already friends. Became

allies – against them.

You taught me to smoke:

puff, cough, sip raspberry cordial,

lie down dizzy on your bed.

We escaped to Melbourne,

you dragged me from studying to parties:

dancing in the dark to Nat King Cole.

Later we hosted children’s birthday parties.

Always talked for hours;

literature and theology, with coffee.

Wish you weren’t dead.

Written July 2008.

Cousin-Sister

Soon after you died, you came

to visit in my mind.

We sat together, children again,

talking as we used to

among tall ferns and grasses

and bells of pink heath

in that secret dell under the pines.

We always called it Paradise.

I wonder now if that in itself

was your message.

Otherwise, we said little.

Tied up a few loose ends;

agreed we were quits. Grinned.

Written August 2008.

My Late Adopted Brother

Bulky, deep-voiced, bushy-bearded,

smoker (both kinds), 

acquainted with drink.

How could he be an angel? 

Thus: 

           deep down 

a gentle, gentle soul

(words of a mourner

on facebook); the kindest, 

sensitive, most creative … 

deepest feelings (another);

his musical gift; and the way

he always had my back.

I like to think of him

pleasantly surprised,

finding himself there;

can well imagine he’d choose

to stay now, not come back

for another turn on the wheel.

Adios, Bro!

Written June 2019.

Notes:

Dear Denis.

Denis is my only birth sibling, four years younger. We are in no real danger of forgetting each other, even though we still live in different countries, and nowadays meet only on facebook and in the occasional phone conversation. This poem resulted in a visit from him soon after it was written! (Yes, he retrieved the magazines and the statuette.)

Sister.

My stepsister Merrie, who died in a house fire early in 1995. We met in our mid-teens and were very happy to become sisters, even though there was nothing else I liked about that situation. We continued to regard ourselves as sisters thereafter.

Cousin-Sister.

My cousin Suzanne, whom I was pretty much brought up with when we were little – always half-ally, half-rival, and mutual confidante – who died in the second half of 2009, following a long illness .

My Late Adopted Brother. Phillip (Phill) Barker: poet, digital artist and muso; my co-host for several years in the online groups Haiku on Friday and Tanka on Tuesday – first on MySpace, then facebook. We soon started calling each other 'Sis' and 'Bro', in unofficial mutual adoption, and would meet up for lunch or coffee on my Christmas visits to my old home city, Melbourne, where he lived. He always gave me a new notebook: a beautiful cover, and a practical size for toting about. 'Poets need notebooks,' he would say. Between times, we were in constant touch by phone, text and email. He died in June 2019, of a fast-growing cancer. We had a couple of excellent phone conversations in the days before his death.