This poem is in tribute to my brother Armand, who lived a rich, full, and loving life, and who died recently at the age of 92. For a time, he lived on a small farm in rural Maine, the setting for this poem.

           To My Brother on His Magic Farm

         Honey light healing the bark of trees

         shadows drifting toward the sheltering barn

         necklaces of flowers, breeze-driven

         silence of singing cicadas

         sky utterly blue, clouds fairest white

         you, my brother, kneeling, working some rough tool,

         scraping along the fence, fully concentrated   

         your dear companion, silver hair blessed with sun,

         standing swept by wind in her garden    

         I will know you this way forever.

         Here in the comfort of the farm

         held by soft and silent hills

         you will live beyond my dreams

         through all time and ages

         I will always come here,

         find you standing by.

         It could not be

         that this sweet place

         will one day be no longer

         that sky and earth will be erased    

         and your old bones

         lie beneath the tree.

         I know the farm dwells forever

         its cabbages always bloom,

         honeybees find their perfect flower.

         I touch you under sunlight radiant like no other

         peace enters my body like a river

         the hawk circles twice, and flies away.