Ohio Connections Literary Exhibit
Return to Ohio Connections home page
Thicker Than Water
By Robert Miltner
My two brothers and me:
what binds us is blood.
And water. Like Lake Erie
at the end of the street
we grew up on as kids.
My older brother became
a water safety engineer who
works to keep our water,
like his own childhood,
clean, pure, consistent.
The younger, a plumber,
efficiently and forcefully,
moves water through pipes
so that it arrives on time
and at the proper temperature
to sprinkle lawns or wash hands.
And I, the other brother, who
sat for hours on piers watching
the horizon divide the world,
write poems about how water—
deep, dark, quiet—collects in me,
moves through me, like blood.
| 
