Page 25 (From MetroEast NEWS - April 2012)
Poem to my brother
By Aaron Phillip Ruiz –MetroEast NEWS
Inheritance
You claimed a possession by the Spirit of Saint Louis and sighed as Vs of geese flew like airplanes overhead. I coughed that
Caution is a small albatross. And as one amelia earhart to another, I offered,
You will fall if you risk to attempt. There will be no dawn.
Only to drown in a place no one will ever find.
So you can understand how I still hold upright posture on the flat of the planet. This landing locus of source and ending. I’ve been you, my brother, I’ve flown
Like a father to a son I say, I’ve fallen from higher than you could ever,
How our grandfather flew planes in the war, our greater grandfather and then one eventual grandfather way before back to a son of wax wings, who flew straight down a hole in the atmosphere and dragged us all behind him through the air, nailing us to the wide gravity.
You come from a long line of crashing, kid. We buy our bandaids in bulk
We hold a collective hubris we began when our young arms flung out toward specks on the horizon and we spat out words to our older brothers and father how we will be the first to cross that sea.
But you, the malgré lui king, hear nothing I have said, you stare into the sun, and in the blind bottomless thirst for fresher oxygens you say, with your arms spanning to greet much higher pressures,
Come, my brother, and meet me in the air.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruiz is a resident of Swansea, Illinois and has attended Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville. Aaron has also served as the Co-Editor of the McKendree Montage at McKendree University in Lebanon, IL. Aaron joined MetroEast NEWS as a contributor in January 2012 and provides freelance prose in various topics of choice.
