Jazz foot steps of summers only left
in our veins.

I have two brothers
One is seven the other is sixteen.
BUT sometimes I feel
like a have one brother and one accomplice,
sidekick, and scout-- one partner to
walk the parameters of our half--acre yard
as if it were something to guard--
A cement stepping stool out of the ocean
on a military base in the Caribbean--
The older of the two is Billy--
he is and always will be my accomplice, 
sidekick, scout-- scapegoat to my fifth grade
experiments gone array--
There is something passed between
people who share summers with each other--
some sort of a understanding that
was injected in our shared veins
in chlorine fireworks and chocolate chip sandwiches.
We had mastered cabinet cuisine--
lunches of a pizza wraps and ketchup toast
sustained two explorers of day time television
and our own backyard--
and there were still things left undiscovered--
In the summer everything is infinite 
and yet already over-- we woke up
each morning to the visage of and older self
staring back in the mirror somewhere
in the the shower fog
reminding us that summer is as long as 
the Susquehanna and shallow as the
creek that we used to pretend was the world--
the creek that's other side was elsewhere.
Billy and I have blue rasperberry Popsicle veins.
We ate celery out of boredom and we're still
waiting for our peace prizes in the mail
for our work in Dragon orphanages.
We built tepees from tri pods and held
potato roll feasts at sunset.
I'm still sorry for making him drink tooth paste
and I'm still sorry I've never been
able to tell him that sometimes he's my older
brother too-- through nights of a bed sheet
tents in the attic when the house would
crack her knuckles to wake me up--
I would nudge him with my foot to wake him up
so that I wouldn't be alone. He wouldn't
say anything-- just open his eyes like
a rabbit and every monster in the creases
of the room not touched by night light
would quake at the notion him.
And I would go back to sleep.
And he would mumble about the next
day and what we would do before
resting his head on my shoulder
and cradling a stuffed shark like a 
life raft.
We walked through more summers
than we have years-- we walked 
to the foot steps of Jazz fingers
and bass strings yet strung--
we walked in bare feet and dirt
and the cracked cement on the porch--
between our father's beer bottles
and the corpses of attempted summer gardens--
parched parsley in between our toes--
we were children of thinking 
about how beautiful were the weeds.