My Brother’s Bed

To wake up remembering his empty bed 
is serene as touching the walls of a cave, 
is to believe you can keep that Friday in mind 
and heft Galilee on your back. 
To hang up the night’s smock 
and oil the lamp, to see through 
a blinding tear is to step outside of a day 
and allow whoever knocks on the front door 
to visit you in this stone room 
you call your life. This place 
that returns today and on a Friday ten years hence, 
occupied now by a ransomed brother 
who makes that room his windowed attic, 
his foyer of the sky.