We drove a rollercoaster road, Stephen and I.
I caught the eye of a man four hours into driving in fence posts.
Boots in the brambles.
August at his brow.
“Remember that man we saw whose job it was to shovel coal out of the North Sea?”
“Nope. I don’t, no.”
Back then we weren’t drink-‘til-we-drop types
or the flip-out-‘til-we-flop guys
who littered and locked teachers in cupboards.
I wasn’t the kid who rattled the tobacco tin full of old money
to scare the starlings from the bread left for a hunted Mallard hen.
Stephen still isn’t the boy who pulled the trigger.
Our talk at the table isn’t an explosion of feathers,
BB’s shot from trees or the breaking of a horse.
Rather, it’s just a mutter between brothers
As a cowboy hollers from a western on the TV:
“What a hell of a man a man might become!”
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