My Big Brother

 I Believe my brother is
out of his mind
he is buzzing through
the cell lines
laughing in an
almost manic
voice
or perhaps
it only seems that way
because his laughter
is light and
childlike
instead of heavy
and dripping
with sarcasm

Could it be
that this other
abandoned child has called
to reach out
flinging
a security rope
like
a twisted
umbilical chord to
the one surviving member of
us
that is here
the only one around
who can also remember our father's
advice
and our mother's laughter?

He is like a man in a
trance.
or perhaps he's just
drunk
as I remember his alcoholic years
long before
the empty scotch bottles
in the liquor cabinet
when he'd left me
to get rid of the farm
during dad's illness

He's a good guy
under all that Scottish-ness
He might have cried, as Scottish men do,
if he'd
been at my wedding
and he might have cried at dad's
celebration of life
if he'd been there
But a ski jumpin'
bush piloting
off-the-grid kind of
kind a guy
doesn't weep
not in front of
me
at least
after all, he's my big brother.

It boggles my mind,
I just can't
explain
the mantic lightness of the
laughter and
Chitchat
and sudden curiosity at my
life
that comes at me through
cell phone

But now that the money's,
safe
in his bank
will it last?

His mother, my mother
our mother
used to disappear
after exposing that soft-tender
side
beneath the layers

"you've been a better mother
to me,
than I've been to you"
she let slip one day,
the words floating between her lips
and my ear
through that hissing
phone

And then the silence
for months
as my punishment

So I wonder -
will big brother
stay
to protect me?
or, will he flee
 to the VW Bus
With no address
and leave me to
fondly remember
the only twenty minuets of
lightness and awe
I'd ever heard
pass my brothers lips
and slip into my ear?