(a poem ending with lines from “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

How I managed the sight of smoke
from my mother’s kitchen and not remember
that I once lived in a home fire burns everything
that has a body, I do not know.
My little brother remembers still that there was
a scar behind his back, something he got
from a blind bullet during the war that claimed
our land and wipe us from the history book.
The smoke on the mountain behind our tabernacle
draws the portrait of his memory on the sky.
Yes, he remembers the fire and the embers of a city.
How do I tell him we’re the fulfilment of what’s written?
That every gathered cloud would rain water through
heaven’s eyes and not fire or bomb or bullet?
I understand there’s still a dent of black
on his rainbowed heart, but every traces
of grief has gone with the old earth.
So we’d beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.