for Alexander

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1.

South of a Scandinavian shoal, my brother

                              braids through the fields in his robes — braids

          through the wheat and the oats, tending.

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A late spring brushes through a shepherd’s grain,

                                        brushes like the boar bristle brush

                              through the blond of his daughter’s hair —

blond as his own. Home with his haul,

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          he lifts his daughter onto his hip & holds her

by the hearth, helps her pour the honey in —

                              clove and cardamom crushed with their hands.

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In the dark of a corner cabinet and covered

                              with cloth, the mead they made will bloom with

          age — sung and stored in barrels out back,

                                        buried by the parsnips sooted with snow.

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2.

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My brother, tucking me into bed at night,

          asked me what I could see. First, cholera spelled out

                    on the spirit board, but only amusingly.

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          He had me spooked like a filly horse for a while.

I wanted to believe in the supernatural,

                    stories that sent me crawling into my mother’s bed.

          Centuries after & strolling under big leaf

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                    magnolias, my brother asks, if perhaps — there might

be something here? A shepherd lifts a cattle horn

          cup to my lips, once an offering to a medieval grave.

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Before there was cicerone, there was this:

          the half note hymn of a past life, a botanical lesson

on the hillocks as sheep scurry with their herd,

                    the fume of burnt sugar in a sheepdog’s coat

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          after a day under lightning. My brother, what I see

                              is your heart bound to earth with my own,

a daughter with our mother’s hair — dreaming

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                              with the glume of her father beating under

her ear. And I can hear the shepherd            calling you to me.