Brother Islands

A canvas lying long and horizontal.
All a faded earthen color.
A single line of horizon
quietly divides the world.
On the left, one large rock;
far to the right, another mass.
People called these two rocks
brothers.
Brothers who cannot draw near,
cannot hold hands,
but look at each other all their lives
with their feet in the same water.
Do not call this a background.
The rock does not recede.
It arrived before people
and stands before our eyes.
Not a background.
A condition.
Before this color,
this wind,
these rocks,
only then does a person become a person.
The world is there first,
and before it
we learn who we are.
From those two rocks we learn
how to stand in the same sea,
even when we cannot touch.