The following are a few stanzas taken from a poem called “Brother and Sister.”
It is remembrance of sibling love presented in the tenderest way.
It recalls to me my youth playing with my sister and as I was looking through pictures of my son Matt’s family, his son Nic is playing with his little sister Nisha, I hope and trust this poem will be theirs.
I typed in blue the lines that sparked most for me.


He was the elder and a little man
Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,
And I the girl that puppy-like now ran,
Now lagged behind my brother’s larger tread.

I held him wise, and when he talked to me
Of snakes and birds, and which God loved best,
I thought his knowledge marked the boundary
Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest.

Thus rambling we were schooled in deepest lore,
And learned the meaning that give words a soul,
The fear, the love, the primal passionate store,
Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole.

We had the self-same world enlarged for each
By loving difference of girl and boy;
The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach
He plucked for me, and oft he must employ.

This boyish Will the nobler master learned
Where inward vision over impulse reigns,
Widening its life with separate life discerned,
A like, unlike, a Self that self restrains.

His years with others must the sweeter be
For those brief days he spent in loving me.

His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy
Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;
My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy
Had any reason when my brother came.

School parted us; we never found again
That childish world where our two spirits mingled
Like scents from varying roses that remain
One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

Photo by Tony Hadley