His Name is John

His Name is John


--for my brother


If you hadn’t named him you could say
it wasn’t meant to be.
If you had another boy,
you could wipe the slate clean--
use the name again.
But you never had another boy...
John is your name too and sometimes
when someone calls, you hear an echo.
On weak days you listen and succumb to the sadness
which is a lake you fall into fully clothed
and emerge cold to the bone.

At such times you wonder who he might have been,
how he would have sounded when he laughed.
He spent less time out of the womb than in it.
Now, no-one in the family mentions the baby.
So, each year you kneel, light a candle, say his name.

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