Danny Callaghan

“Sad news”: it’s Danny Callaghan,

Dead a year after his brother died

Of  the same weak heart their father had.

Gone are all the Callaghan men.

His mother will share with anyone

Who asks her what his doctor said:

The varices in his stomach bled

From all the drinking he had done

In the one year—just one year’s time.

She doesn’t need to add because

He loved his brother so. The laws

Of understanding drive it home.

Nor do I doubt that it was true.

We were schoolmates, little else.

I had no finger on his pulse.

But as a little boy can do

Who sees another whose laugh can make

Ten others laugh, whose counterpoise

At ease betrays a gift for plays

At shooting guard or quarterback,

I looked on him as an idol, to

The point that I could almost pine

Merely to be a member in

The retinue of  his retinue.

And there were nights I lay awake

Restless, empty, when I would write

Over and over his name on the slate

Behind my eyelids with airy chalk.

(I don’t know why at forty-two

I find this strange. At eight or ten

The habit had been ingrained as in

The certain way one ties a shoe.)

Which is why years later, when

Returning to the neighborhood

On break from college, I had stood

Watching, from a distance, Dan

And his big brother, the same height then,

Out in the schoolyard, just the two

Of them alone and midway through

A game of baseball, playing one-

On-one if  you ignore the wall

That echoed them like a tympanum

Behind the plate for the pitcher’s team.

And now and again a ball would sail

Over some bike racks for a home run

And one would hang his head in grief

As if to wish for his relief

As the other hollered on and on

Then shake it off to hasten his chance

To pay him back the compliment.

Back and forth Dan and his brother went

With such seeming permanence,

With such sweep of  indifference

To anything that didn’t bear

On swings or pitches or the score,

Or smacked of outside influence

On that otherwise dull summer day,

It was as if the two orbited

As each the other’s satellite

And I was Kepler to their joy—

If only joy would never end,

All brothers play as they had played,

And none of them be bound to trade

A box for a box and mound for mound.