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Only A Phase

David J. Thompson

My brother Doug came home that Christmas
from Cornell convinced he was Jesus Christ.
He had grown his hair long with a wispy beard;
walked around the house in his ratty bathrobe
and a pair of huaraches he had leftover
from his beatnik days a few years earlier
muttering Scripture and blessing everyone
like some character out of a fucked-up-family
Bergman movie. For the first few weeks
we thought he was just still tripping
on some bad frat party acid, or it was a stunt
to keep himself the hell out of Vietnam.
By February, my parents were tired
of all the washed in the blood of the lamb talk,
so they sent him to see a shrink, who,
after a few sessions said it was only a phase
most college students go through, like listening
to Billie Holiday or Patsey Cline.

After that we got used to him that way, started
to really like having him around, didn’t even mind
the really long grace he said before every meal.
He was happy just to rebound and pass for me
while I was shooting baskets out in the driveway,
spent hours in my sister’s room listening to Dylan
and, I’m pretty sure, smoking plenty of weed.
Every night he gave my mom a long foot bath
and rub while she watched TV, and he helped
my dad build some bookshelves for his den,
and redo all the kitchen cabinets.

I guess now we shouldn’t have been surprised
when he disappeared on Good Friday that year,
and when he wasn’t back by Saturday morning
we were all pretty damn worried. We hoped
maybe he had just gone to see his ex-girlfriend
in Poughkeepsie, and mom tried to joke that
he’d be home as soon as he got hungry enough
or needed to have his laundry done. On Easter
Sunday I know we held hands around the table
laden with glazed ham and string bean casserole
and prayed like hell for him to come home.
Thank God, that night as we sat down to watch Ben-Hur
on television we heard the front door open.
Hallelujah, dad said. Christ is risen.

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