Moon Brother


I used to like to lie in bed
watching my brother tucked in safe.
And fancy while we slept,he
slid from his cot,
shimmied up through the window.
Scaling the polishedroof tops,
oblivious to the night wind uplifting his baby's hair,
stepping deftly on to the poplar branches,
white sleepsuit luminous against the sky:staring out into dark space.

Then by an imaginary leap,
he'd reach the stars,
using them as stepping stones
to hop on to the moon,

and he'd sit, and begin to spin, an extraordinary thread,from the colours of the moon.

He doesn't sleep in my room in a cot anymore
nor can he wear white sleepsuits.
He screams in his colour clashing nursery
stuffing fingers in ears at the jangling day.
or sits on a cushion staring at a model railway.
To be absoloutely sure its certain of its way.
There's hushed conversation in grown up rooms,
which stops, when they know I'm there,
There are titters in the playground that my brother cannot bear.

But I think one day we'll all wake up early, gasp,point and stare, at my brother luminous against the sky doing things we'd never dare.
Sitting, spinning extraordinary thread from the colours of the moon.