First bike and doll
were wall.
You were not my brother when
we were eight and ten.
King of the Chemical Set,
Ace of the Model Plane;
you were Tom Swift and Hairbreadth Harry,
hero I should some day marry.
Lover, but never brother.
Then fence
of adolescence.
When childhood was done
you became my son.
Knickerbocker teens,
I knew trousers of twenty;
dressing for college dance,
you were still in knee-pants.
Mother, but never brother.
Now age has leveled all
that former wall.
Laughing, look back from our open plain.
Weeping, the walls remain,
too high to scale
too low to crawl beneath.
Not lover or mother
but stranger to each other.
When will I call you brother?
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