Poem for my November brothers

All Saints Day, the day after Halloween, the

day the nuns set us free from Catholic school only to

corral us later in church for mass of the saints

St. Daniel, St. Patrick, the namesakes without the intro

S-T, my brothers with November birthdays.

The days are still theirs, 18 for Pat, 25 for Dan

which sometimes fell on Thanksgiving.

The years pass and still I miss them. No birthday

cards to send, no phone calls to make, talk about

family and football. Pat passed in the spring, pneumonia,

the really bad kind. He got a bad break in his 55^th year.

Dan passed a week before his 61^st birthday, multiple

myeloma, the really bad kind. Both too young. I see them

now even younger, I surf summers with Pat and Dan, backpack

in Colorado with Pat before he went to the Air Force and Korea.

We're at a school dance, Dan with 30 stitches across his brow

skegged on the morning's big waves, the school now gone, 

named for the first priest to celebrate a mass in Florida, Spanish for

flowery. Someday in the future, our photos will be all that’s left,

an ancestor with travel plans for Mars wonders who

are those young guys posing with their surfboards in

front of The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse in Daytona,

sunburned youth wild and free. We forget, that’s the truth of it,

it’s our lot to forget where we come from. But now, this first

day of November 2023, I remember it all. The images are in

my head; memories, my heart; poem right here, right now, 

on this blog.