Poem: Baths with Keir

“Poem of the Fortnight” is still on an erratic schedule. I hope to get back on track after a big deadline passes in April.

Baths with Keir
For Keir Blackley

We weren’t real cousins—
our dads had been best friends
since their India days in the RAF—
but we sloshed around in the tub together
too young to notice our different body parts.

I never knew him as an adult.
Brilliant, by all accounts,
math major.

When we were old enough to know the difference
would we have been friends, lovers,
or only barely remembered acquaintances?

He was dead at 21.

We may not have been this cute, but we had this much fun (along with my brother)

Art from Katie J. Williams’ web site