Reunion

 

REUNION

 

My brother died.
We siblings gathered
To sort through his belongings.
In one box, we found a little stuffed bear,
Its fuzz worn away in patches.
Curious, I asked one of my sisters to pass it to me,
And when I held it up,
And looked into the two buttons
That were all that remained of its face,
Those eyes came alive in mine.
To the surprise of my sisters,
I blurted out, from a place deep within:
“Beary!”
 
Beary! 
Companion and comforter
Of my early childhood!
Beary! 
Whose name I had not uttered
Nor remembered
For nearly sixty years!
Beary!
Lost to my awareness,
But there within me all along.
 
Beary!
You quickened this old man,
Awakened me
To the little child still living within:
The child who knows
Your eyes look back
Into my own,
The child whose love for you
Is one and the same with your love for me.
 
When I had grown out
Of the life in Beary’s eyes,
And saw them just as plastic buttons,
I must have given Beary
To my baby brother.
And through my brother’s early years,
The love of Beary fed his soul.
And when my brother grew out
Of the life in Beary’s eyes,
Beary went into a box
Until our moment of reunion.
 
The last time I saw my brother.
As he lay in a hospital bed,
Our eyes locked,
As my eyes fixed on Beary’s when I was a toddler,
As my brother’s eyes gazed into Beary’s when he was young.
And now as I look into Beary’s eyes,
Again we live
And we love.