Dear Brother...

Time, a bird of rare feather,

has flown between us,

swift as a shooting star.

So I dream in the daytime

in my lunch hour,

as nostalgia is fleeting fast...

My mind is caught on our youth

as I turn the final page

of Harper's Mockingbird,

'Time is so uncouth' I think,

and I imagine where you are...

No doubt sitting by the roses,

cigarette smouldering,

as you stare intently at your hands.

Questioning life and it's modern complexities.

I wonder if you wonder of me too...

If you remember me trying to fit

into your clothes and shoes?

(Or just your impatience with it?)

Do you recall teaching me to ride my bike?

Or our bedtime stories, bushwalks with Dad

and 'I Spy' in the car?

What about our paper plane war games

played during Mrs Barber's history class?
I smile smugly to myself even now,

as I recall you were sent out and not I!

Oh, They were good times!

Ones I reminisce of so infrequently.

But then our teen years flood my mind.

Of all the times I could of said 'I told you so!'

Yet knowing little good it does me now.

So try, do I, to evoke only

the pleasant memories we then shared...

But they're long gone,

swept up with the 'whoosh'

of the imminent wind

from the wings of the bird of time...

So the hourglass has been turned upward

to ignite the next stage of our lives.

And I for one, am glad it's done!

Yet I still hold onto a childish wish

to race you up the chook-pen hill,

past Kangaroo Park to the pine trees...

I know, I know my dwelling on the 'then'

the present will soon smother,

But to be fair, few memories

bring me such joy, Dear Brother.

- Mia L Hart 2011