At minus two months, Pablo Casals
heard his mother playing cello:
strings droning on the far side of water.
(Later, sight-reading, he would know the tune
without turning the page)

Brother who never knew light or
breathed through nostrils,
what airs found you on your ocean's floor?
fertilized your curt gestation?

We shared the same confines,
bloodstream,
gene pool.
The same mom talked out loud to us at night
foolishly, as one talks to turtles, or
urgently, hands clasped around the lurching
crystal ball, her belly.

Brother who died before the page was turned,
how much of this did you unwittingly hear?