The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 11/30/07 Bonus

"Late Speech With My Brother"

I can see you now so vividly,
fine head tilted back,
bold Teutonic jaw stiff, the
bristly along it glistens and your blue
eyes glitter like glass. I have always
feared you would take your life, I have seen you
taking your life for thirty-five years,
taking it cell by cell. I can see you
throw away your body as easily
as you thrust your whole thumb that time
into the moving machinery, so
gracefully, as if you understood
the union of science and the human. I can see you
sending your body to hell as they sent us to
bed without supper, you’re as big as them now
and as proud, you would die before you would break and say
Please, don’t. Please, don’t
do their work for them,
don’t produce a stopped life like some
work of art, the bottle fallen
away from your open hand. It is not
too late, your life is ahead of you,
behind you is your thirty-five years of
death—I have seen a man of eighty
drop his parents' hands and just walk the other way.

—Sharon Olds

I like this one a lot...