Written in Atlanta, summer 1996, for no one in particular. There were these two big buildings, ugly pre-cast-concrete monstrosities, right next to each other on Peachtree Parkway Boulevard Drive Avenue Shoals Crossing Drive. (If you know Atlanta, that's funny.) They didn't actually look like dice; they looked like 70's-era flash cubes (due to their "Mechanical Hats" on their roofs). I was sick of Atlanta, sick of our apartment, sick of the roadways, sick of the traffic, hell, I was sick of shopping at Publix, although there's nothing actually wrong with shopping at Publix. It was time to get home (and we did, not long after). (Shortly after coming back to Charlotte, I went with my father and friends up Mount Lanier, a terrific hike, worth the effort itself, not to mention the view, which we missed on that trip, since the mountain was socked in by fog the night we arrived. We hiked down the next morning in a full snow that melted as it hit the ground. It was an absolutely gorgeous trip, and it got me to reflect that, ironically, when I wrote "Brother," I wasn't getting out to the country at all, ever.) This was my father's favorite poem for a long time, because, he said, it was the only one he understood.