Ethan
By dyan sandefer

Little brown bug of a boy.
Too weak to pull the trigger
on the cap gun, he came to us,
thrusting the pistol into our hands,
saying, do this, do this,
looking up with impish
eyes, grinning wider
with every pop of the cap.

Later, with the bonfire raging,
as we welcomed a New Year,
someone lit sparklers for him.
He was always on the verge
of setting a butt on fire,
wagging his flaring sword indiscriminately,
ever so pleased when the grown-ups jumped
away quickly.

In the summer, beside the creek,
he wanted to swim,
but he could only be held at the water's
edge, unable to carry
even the light load of his own weight,
the sparkle in his eyes dulled
by toxic medicine
that quieted his body but could not ground
his soaring spirit.

Snatched prematurely from our midst
by the angels as he lay sleeping,
his memory persists
forever engraved upon our tender,
raw hearts.

Grief
By dyan sandefer

grief is a strange emotion:
it slips up unannounced
and swells inside,
catching you off-guard
and unprepared.

it has been nearly four years
since the departure
of my baby brother
(at the ripe young age
of thirty-four).

yet, sometimes
there is something that brings
him back to me.
the hunger to touch him,
to hug and be hugged by him,

it consumes me for awhile.
i miss him terribly,
the grief is fresh and raw,
like a new wound.
these are the times

when i long to hear him laugh
again and to tell him i love him,
that he was the best baby brother
we could have,
that he was a goodhearted man.

and i wonder,
if i had known that year
was the last
we would have with him in this life,
what would i have done differently?

i would have said
i love you
more.

dyan sandefer lives in Southwest La. with her husband, three children, and an odd assortment of neutered animals, where she struggles to write poetry about the deeper things of life, sometimes seen with a slightly skew-eyed glance. Due to her reluctance to experience rejection, she has only recently begun to actually share her poetry with the unsuspecting world. She does have several poems slated to appear in PoetryRepairShop and a couple of people who are confident in her abilities to write meaningful poetry.