Not that we saw much of each other
after we’d left home at eighteen,
me to college, Bob to his destiny,
but we were always in touch, by mail,
and later, phone calls and e-mail.
The only times we actually saw each other
in the final two decades of his life:
1994, at our father’s funeral,
back home in Potawatomi Rapids,
scene of our childhood and growing-up;
2005, at our older brother’s, in Albuquerque;
2012, at our mother’s, in Potawatomi Rapids,
and finally, in 2013, two years before he died,
in LA, where he lived, when he got the diagnosis:
Stage four lung cancer, the first of many
chemotherapy treatments about to start.
My daughter and I went out to visit him.
The fourth act in a five-act play.
The print was so small on my cellphone,
I read the word audience as violence.
