I wrote this piece while I was caring for my identical twin brother, following major surgery. Nearly everything you may have heard about identical twins is true.

 

Brother

The pain of being is not mine, but

my brother's. He cries and howls the Midnight

down into uneasy drowse

as the daylight lifts his covers

over swelling clouds of hurt.

Breaking, I balm him a little,

while police sirens whistle over the outer darkness

on roads beyond the skies.

 

A man of visceral heart, he lies

in the shaded courtyards of our parallel lives,

waiting, anticipating new ways of living

in sun-hammered sandgrounds

and billowing, oaken uplands; finding,

no doubt, familias where no such genus dwells,

in either world.

 

This man of courage reaches towards

new remembrances, uttering sounds which soon

I will not hear, but feel

through vibrations in bone,

at home, a place brittle with unended finality,

stretched beneath fine rain showers.

 

Ahead, I see the beckoning loom of a northern light.

 

Chris Hubbard

Perth

2015