When my brother died, I stuffed his shoes with newspaper to make them fit 
 I think of him when I wear them
  
 His lungs, always weak on the baseball field 
 Couldn’t take it. 
 They filled up like flour sacks
  
 OklahomaTexasKansasColorado 
 Topsoil turned turgid all over the plains 
 Invading him
  
 We played soldiers once
 Marched along, army of two 
 Cotton kids, legs like matchsticks 
 Falling in. 
  
 We played cowboys once
 Wrangling hapless chickens in the grass 
 When there was grass
  
  
 There is no now, as far as I’m concerned
 There are only weres and could-have-beens
 blotted out by dustclouds
 Like the sun that afternoon