Blue, Green, Red and Purple: My Brother's Letter
A solitay letter. Just one letter, in all those decades. Such a letter deserved a poem to honour its arrival, and Betty Collins wrote one.
The postie came a bit late on Wednesday morning.
He brought me a letter from my brother.
The postie was casual and whistling
and barely paused on his scooter to
push the thick letter
into
the letterbox:
he didn’t know, how could he,
that this was the first and only letter that my brother had ever written to me
in his whole life.
My brother said
that he and his wife and family were well.
That he was sending me some snapshots
of places of our childhood:
parks and beaches where we had played,
of the church we went to
and of our school which he attended until he was eight
(and too old for the nuns).
He said his son, Alistair, his youngest boy,
whose eyes had been badly damaged in a motor car accident,
had completed his LLB and was going to London.
On the back of the letter he had scrawled some words from our old school song:
“Star that we love, Star of the Sea
Brightest of all in God’s galaxy
Show us the way and boldly we’ll run
New battles faced, and vict'ries won.”
This was the only letter I have ever received from my brother.
Ever.
