Air is lighter than words.
And words, themselves,
rise and fall, an ocean
of breath and breathing.
When you stalked the halls
of the first, long room I said
'my brother isn't here'. He
was not there but rather
anywhere, above. He was in the garden
among persimmon trees and watched
as a line of washing, caught
by the wind, was carried
into the sky. I have heard that death
by falling is serene, that you do not,
ultimately, feel the impact. Death
by fire is worse. Or, what if fire
were combined with air? Later my
brother recalled the city of Avignon
beset itself by fire and watched each
ember of the city distemper
into the sky as borne by its breath the wind
I said, 'brother, you are as light
as the face of a dandelion'. That summer
a statue of a man with a punched-in face
was recovered from the clay-beds.
Once, the body's dream was its heaviness.
Once, I saw the balloon they made in the fallow
field lift and its rope slip their fingers.
Once, I watched this object rise
and fall
the way lungs are said
to rise and fall. My brother
now is as far away as the stars
which, are said, to be light itself, unfiltered.
In my dreams
we are there each night, reaching to them.
