Missing by Mary Morris

Saw my brother in a wolf, in wildflowers
climate change, bobcats, javelina, and praying
mantis, lilac scent, laughter. Saw him howling

himself back onto the sidewalk of his life
before he lay his body in front of a bus, drunk.
I don’t know what risk is really, to be
that bare, that happy with ruin.

The dead won’t give their secrets away.
Occasionally in dreams we receive
a postcard with an unknown stamp
from a place so remote there is no dirt.

Or bees. No grass. Only air and water.
A blue postcard of a boat unmoored
or single oar afloat. On the back, a message
so faint, or a palimpsest, layer upon
layer upon, illegible.

On anniversaries of their departures
they blow kisses in wind from behind
mountains or sing in disguise through
gale or bird. Then silence. Waif thin.

Let the twilight come. Dusk. Its darker
bright, its mission with night hawk, wolves
and great horned owls, its ancient fables

in constellations. Letters to the evening
of missing brothers, children, husbands
gone north, and our own two parents
with their creation stories, us.

Mary Morris is the author of two books, Dear October (2020) and Enter Water, Swimmer. Published in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and Massachusetts Review. She received the Rita Dove Award, Western Humanities Review Prize, and was invited to read at the Library of Congress, aired on NPR. www.water400.org