my nearest sibling

Any volunteers to express "go up and get my nearest older sibling"?
In this example:

 <list type="gloss"><label><gi>front</gi></label><item>contains any
 prefatory matter (headers, title page, prefaces, dedications, etc.)
 found before the start of a text proper.</item>

when processing <item>, I want to get my paws on the associated
<label>.

Is this really trivial and I am being dense? should

 "../label[position()]"

work? actually, position() never seems to do what I expect. does it
produce the sibling count?

sebastian


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list