Helen Miller’s Little Brother

The bullies all around him must have seemed

Like combine harvesters to someone wee

Like autumn blossoms when the bastards teamed

Up. Gary, like a sweet weed in the scree

Beneath a bing, somehow survived and found

His way to my protection in the room

That looked out towards hulked stone, the Pentlands mound.

That view began where no young growth could bloom—

The flat tar roof outside my classroom. He

Loved wagtails, though, as delicate as him

And they ran bobbing, flicking there as we

Stood watching. Delicacy thrives at whim

Of teachers loving picked on, fragile mites

With petal tears who run from playground fights.