poetry.poem.poets.

Awaiting aeroplanes for separate destinations

My brother and I

Walk together

Through the old streets of Palma.

An advert tempts us toward an exhibition

Showing 15th century instruments of torture.

We visit, instead,

A commemoration.

Old photographs from World War Two.

This war began 1939

Who cares now?

Aliens

We leave the cathedral gallery.

Born in another time, we fight another battle.

My brother and I,

Holding court on a park bench.

Two from one womb,

Immersed by our own private, interlocking, part.

The family from which we came,

And the families before us,

That keeps us a part,

Off springing our own branches.

It seems a miracle

And yet so common,

This touch of the centuries.

How many other brothers and sisters,

Together have trudged these cobbles,

Wondering if they have the where with all,

To sustain, their remaining years,

Without instruments of torture,

Or World War Two?

Neither pilot, nor inquisitor,

Knew of ‘crack’ ‘d ozone layers.

All the battles each generation faces.

It’s only ourselves we punish with oppression,

Not just the oppressed, but so too, the oppressor.

Cultures divide, civilizations decay,

But my brother and I, bonded in blood,

See colour beyond set definition.

Look at all the brothers and sisters

In the world, who stood their ground,

Countless times in countless years,

That we, two, at this millenniums end,

Can be united,

Awaiting aeroplanes for separate destinations