After My Brother’s Remission

When dawn comes this early, 
a slice of sky visible from my bed 
textures waking. Today’s thin layers clabber 
white . . .
            and I think after all these years 
            of the back room in the farmhouse, 
            my siblings and I startled 
            when a pillow seam gave way 
            and dumped feathers in drifts 
            over and around us, the sight almost worth 
            a new edict from my father, forbidding forever 
            the pillow fights. 

In private moments of those earliest years, 
we learned how to scream gleefully 
while making hardly a sound, 
steeling ourselves in pleasure 
or pain (that gradual human habit)— 
small offenses and injuries of games 
instantly quieted, comforted 
between the secret ways of children 

            who need adults not far 
            away . . . just outside the rambunctious, 
            reverent rooms of childhood.