I.
I don't remember you coming into the world
Preoccupied as I was with filling my nappies
And trying to make my escape
Consciousness of your presence first came
In Tennant Creek when I tried to see
How many elastic bands I could force you to eat
As you bobbed happily in your bouncinette
And would have graduated with fratricide as my major
If our mother hadn't intervened
II.
I think the hugeness of that Northern Territory sky
Did us in - gave us big hopes, romantic ideas
Like climbing White Tank Hill or building
Unassailable fortresses in red dirt
Or feeling keenly the death of our pets
From disease or misadventure
Or trying to understand why the black kids
Smelled like greasy frying pans but could always
Run so fast - away from school and teachers
And the rest of us
III.
The second time I tried to kill you
Was when I watched you fall off that slide
In the playground and break your wrist
It hadn't been anything deliberate on my part
But the screams were piercing and I couldn't help
But be curious and later jealous
As you were flown to Alice Springs, arm in a sling
And once plastered you got to ride a camel
My lesson learnt: those who get hurt get rewarded
IV.
As two kids under five stuck in the outback
With a mother completely out of her element
And a father so in his it was like he had been
There all along -
We had to become each others life jacket
When I wasn't trying to bump you off I like to think
I was trying to protect you -
Smaller, cuter and quieter than I
As we grimaced in our fly nets, playing games
Testing the boundaries of that elemental vastness
Which on our own could have swallowed us whole
V.
Back in the city, we exchanged endless horizon
For labyrinthine suburbs through which we pedaled
Like mice on the run, always that feeling of being
Pursued - harder for you, being put up a year
Mixing it with kids taller and tougher, our bulwark
Caton Avenue where we made do with a playground
In a vacant lot behind a friends house
But trouble always found us in the form of
Older boys on BMXs and injuries ensued
Still we gave it back in symbolic ways
Like my throwing a piss-wet thong
At one of our attackers
The skin on my shin torn open in our escape
VI.
School never was your gig though you had the smarts
Maybe too smart, knowing the minimum you had to do
To get by - for you it was about experience
Perhaps the best teacher of all
But not the most forgiving
Hanging with the Kent Rd boys and the joys
Of alcohol, dope and the wonders of the female form
You always could pull the chicks, even as a kid
The old ladies used to melt when you smiled
Pinching you plump cheeks,
Mooing into your cow-brown eyes
Your olive skin a genetic throwback to some
Yorkshire farmer ideal not recognised till later
And us thinking mum must have had it off
With the Italian milkman
VII.
You turned into an adult so quickly I was left in shock
Taking a wife, buying a house, having a child
It seemed all happiness was yours except that I
Had spoken my mind and the politics of family
Played out, as it does, and we didn't speak again
For seven years, my part no longer that of brother
But of a spectator who's paid too much
To sit too far away
This was my third attempt on your life,
Though it was metaphorical and the one I most regret
For time lost can never be regained
Still I'm not about to stop trying, at least not yet
VIII.
Thankfully all my attempts at doing you in
Have failed and I now have only myself to blame
For trying to put forty years of history
Into these few words and the time that remains
Us the offspring of mother and father
Entwined as such as brother and brother
Different hearts but the same blood
Binding us together as if we were one
You are my strong arm, my sixth sense
My good eye, my confidence
My voice of reason, my call to arms
My mirrored truth, my shield from harm
Your strength and honesty stand as the broadest tree
Your smiles and laughter given easy and free
And if you ever feel shaken so that you might fall
Look to us to hold you up steady, straight and tall
Cherish all the moments that have your life defined
And know I love you dearly, O brother mine
© shaun patrick green 2011
