Closeness

My big brother and I have always been close

My job was to find trouble, his to get us out.

I was the ox, he was the fixer.

If the Watkins boys were on the job

There was nearly nothing we couldn’t do

I could drive a truck ninety to a hundred hours

Per week, illegal yes, but nobody knew

He could run our family business singlehandedly.

We thought we were both gonna live into our eighties

Like our parents did, he has a bad heart,

and I am dying of cancer

For a long time we lived at opposite ends of Florida

But a couple years ago we moved about two hours apart

He has a little boat and we made plans, to meet at the lake

At the corner of Alabama, Florida and Georgia

And spend a day trying to catch some fish

We never got there, and now, it looks like we never will,

I thought we might sit on my porch and tell each other the tales

We both knew, from county hole to the red neck shuffle and on and on

But now I’m too weak to do anything

but sit in my chair in the closeness of my living room

He came to visit and sat close by on the couch

And we talked about the closeness of the end, for both of us

And I played him Jimmy’s Bubbles Up

And I cried, I couldn’t see if he did.

I told him I loved him, and he gave me hug

I know he wished he could get me out of this trouble

One more time.