Long Days

To my brother John.

What happened to long days,
the ones whose ends we couldn’t
fathom till they came,
and by that time at long
last all we had to do 
was fall asleep, and sleep
was another kind of day,
more fluid and with more
momentum, wherein leaps
from the top stair bestowed
on us the gift of flight
that hurled us into waking
with nothing to be done 
and to no end: we’d play
and go inside and come
back out, catch fireflies,
and go back in again,
and as we lay awake,
they would escape, and on 
and off and on they’d make 
a clear midsummer night
sky of our bedroom ceiling?