DROPPED EGGS ON TOAST

My older brother is close to me —

In looks, age and spirit.

A year-and-a-half separates us.

It’s enough, in early life,

For him to be

Rather dominant over me.

 

So our connections into maturity

Were often challenging.

The best of them, however,

Are sprinkled with sharing, love and caring.

My memory and my poetry

May revive them someday.

 

Just before our leap from adolescence

We had bodies, small and spare.

Hardly enough, said Mon Frere,

To contain the zest of life.

We both had the exuberance

To learn how it should be lived.

 

So one morning he devised

A secret recipe.

A sure-fire way

to fuel brawn and muscle.

It would compliment another body building plan,

Charles Atlas’ “Dynamic Tension”.

 

Dropped eggs on toast,

Cooked in milk!

Gently cracked and scalded.

Glazed yolks would stay whole

And those golden orbs shimmered

When he placed them on light umber toast.

 

My brother’s innovation?

He would christen the plate

With scalded milk remnants.

Not a calorie wasted, not a stitch.

All went to his sacred temple

To nourish and enrich.

 

The benediction act came

Was a salt and pepper blessing.

A long pause with subdued head,

(I imagined he read the future

Studying the peppered specks).

Then with earnest gusto, all disappeared.

 

Early on, my brother shared

His secret with me.

He grew a foot that year.

I caught on but had to take

For me an occasional

Double dose at morn and sup.

Plus another year-and-a-half to catch up.

 

We’re four or five times older now.

We have spent half of that time

In disconnection and separation.

I understand our bodies have stood up

To life’s exuberances and tests rather well.

But today, I wonder where our spirits are.

 

Guess it’s time

To tread my way to his mountains.

I’m hungry

And feel the need

To christen another plate

Of dropped eggs on toast.

– dc HILL June 21, 1992