Rhenisch, Harold

The Brothers

1. The sun is a bluebird now
2. She sits in the arms of the birch
3.  
4. They talk all day about Lorne
5. who revived a piglet mouth to mouth
6.  
7. yesterday that was crushed by the sow
8. Who has watched every one of his ewes
9.  
10. die in a breech birth and whose brother
11. fishes shrimp off of Tofino
12.  
13. and Hornby Island who sleeps in his boat
14. and has no other house on this earth
15.  
16. Yesterday the sun was an owl
17. She hid in the green veils of the night
18.  
19. She whispered to the roots of the aspens
20. that feather the air and they whispered back
21.  
22. about a woman with two fathers
23. who fish sheep on the Horse Lake Road
24.  
25. dragging their nets just inches off the sawdust
26. and who lift them together
27.  
28. There in the bottom of the net all crushed together
29. lie the pink and black piglets squirming
30.  
31. the sky is a sow her breath is hot her eyes are small
32. The fathers sort the piglets out and lay them in the straw
33.  
34. and cast the nets again But today
35. the sun is a mountain bluebird
36.  
37. she has slipped on her silk dress
38. Her skin smells of sweetgrass she stands
39.  
40. still with the birch at the shore all day
41. and sighs While under the ice the sheep mill about glowing