Twins

We have invited these strangers into our home.

They will link our lives in change so rapidly

That we will never know them as they are, but

Only as they were:

They will not know they were the ringlets of silk

Sewn in comforters by my Aunt Meriko;

The strength in their femurs was the sturdy stance

Of my Uncle Tim,

Wrenching brilliant tomatoes from red soil;

The calm set of their jaws was a softening

Of my brother’s chin crunching corporate time

To edible bytes;

They were the brush strokes of my mother, painting

The flow of ripe barley sparkling in the fields

My father planted; they were my father’s brow

Folding the furrows;

And, most, they were the fine lines of fiber dried

Into their mother’s paper sculptures, cast art,

Springing from mortal sentiments, alive

Before they were born.