Daily poems, summer 2009

A friend has invited me to write a poem a day for the summer. To keep myself honest I've decided to post them here. Feel free to respond.

Here is Wednesday, June 17, 2009's poem

My Brother's Religion

He believes in madness,
thinks of it as if it were a sheep
that followed him around the farm in Galway
which he encouraged with bits of greens and carrot,
until one day it walked into the house
and he fed it boiled turnips from the pot,
and then taught it to climb the stairs
to sleep on a woolen coat beneath the little, star-filled window.

At night, when he wakes in his room on Centre Street
where the man who shares his bathroom moans, “I’m lost!”
and my brother must call the nurse to find him,
he imagines such a sure,
such a resistless friend—
likes to think
he has domesticated his own darkness,
can feel its full weight shift close beneath the blanket,
hear it sigh beside him in the bed.