Eastern Oregon Correctional Institute

for Matthew

Just back from driving east on 84—

Columbia, the Gorge—and through the misty dark 

To where my brother waits in prison, locked away 

For years, where little can be said, nor should—

Those are the rules.  To Portland, all 

Those Hawthorne apparitions tapping shoulders—“Man, 

The soul is cheaply had.”  So, slowly, home seeps in, 

Our lives’ vast difference.  He had it harder far 

And must have known how bad it was, for all, though most 

For him—could not a happy life create, or with 

Himself in peace, at last in dust and dark.  He could 

Not choose, it seems, to suffer less, to make what most

We want to see, or be the ground of others’ dreams—

And easier by far than prison more 

Than once before the end.  Do not his life and mine, 

Their forking turns, entail some purpose, obligation, too?

Was he much less deserving made?  He lived much more 

Than I who had the easy way, yet now remain 

Of us now one.  We answer yes there is but act 

From no too much, though both assume the need

To use the faculties so granted free, 

And not to hear the flaws, or few— to keep 

The dogs of doubt far hence, though they about 

The margins circle, mark and comment bark.  

What fragile wings our hands may soil, trim or break. 

Worse yet, forget, neglect—complicit in their waste.  

The world robs us and with our help we silent are.

Our voice a stranger to itself, what we 

Name not, half dust, half deity, alike

Unfit to sink or soar, low wants contend 

With lofty will and easy not to say at all.  

Perhaps it’s better far, for many reasons, to 

Take up less space with needless words, the trouble they

Can cause and do and have till death do us apart.  

Did he his voice so loathe? Or want to drown?  

How much we turn against ourselves, my brother, what 

In you is me as well.  Might he have made

More meaning than he did, or be alive

And living still if he from loss or shame 

Or silence say what need be said?  We sat

Across, in rows, who could still rise and leave

And those in Prison Blues.  To me he said

That “Every time there was a choice I made it wrong.”