In life, I bugged my brother relentlessly
about Escher’s impossible staircases,
his floors and doors, his figures with no faces.
It looks like a prison.
It’s not.
“They All Died in Vietnam,” “Echoes from My Mother’s Closet” and “No”
Three forest cousins, all boys, my summer secrets /
We hiked under hawk shadows, spun pancake flat shale /
stones touch tipping Loyalsock Creek, arrowheads, /
rattlesnake skins longer than my arms, salamander wranglers /
The oldest Vernon lingered longest with my grandmother’s stories /
He never liked to hunt except for stars and no one cared, not even the army