BAND OF BROTHERS

I’ve written these words this past week while on my annual “band of brothers” (siblings/sons/grandsons) Canadian fishing trip--which took a three-year hiatus due to Covid-19. We have a great time reconnecting with each other, especially after so long!

Love and joy raise the corners of our eyes

as we look into each other’s aging faces.

It’s been so “Too long!” since our last rendezvous.

But in these few days and nights 

our parts to play in The One Great Story

web us together ever so tightly once again.

We bask beneath each other’s sun 

while the knowing takes fresh hold.

Filaments thin but strong wrap round us, 

and for this trickle of time our lives like stars align. 

Too soon it will be over. Again. Till when? If then. 

Even now, one of us is gone. And though stilled,

yet we feel his bands pull at our hearts. 

While life’s larks seek to undo our sweet weavings

these three things we carry always. 

One, at the end of each day 

the tales of its making will, like the universe, 

grow beyond the size of its catch. 

Two, that in these trophy times together

death is being eclipsed by life yet again.

And three, the bands, the bonds 

that gather us as eternity’s brothers 

cross all our chasms, all our divisions,

drawing us deftly into one another’s orbit 

under the guise of this, humanity’s ancient affair 

with the waters, their wares, their wiles.