The House

When I look at the picture of the house, my home,

I remember the way it was.

I remember watching from the window panes,

This glass house, this fish bowl…

In the summers, the verdant green of the maple trees and pines,

Arranged along the edges of the yard in long, living lines,

With lilac bushes as a cul-de-sac hiding prying eyes from view,

Permeating the air with a scent soft like a feather in your nose,

The grass thick and constant — cut it down and up it grows, cut it down,

Leaving a pungent, sharp, and sour tang to taste, to smell.

The smoky blue sky light and distant, the sun true and clean.

The house painted red, hidden amidst the planted gardens

Of violets, magnolias, rhododendron, daisies, azaleas, chrysanthemums,

A dandelion head here or there roaring out, vines and willows winding up

The sides of that solid structure, built of hewn wood by methodical hands.

In the fall the colors would creep across the boundaries of living things and lines,

The flowers would lend their favor to the leaves, the bark hardening across their petals,

The fragile nature of nature’s treasures would flee to the Earth to hide from the cold of winter.

So then would come the snow, heavy, dense, thick and pure, heavy white in the dead of night.

In the morning the sun, now white and crisp would turn the world into diamonds.

And always, always, life screaming bright and broad.   I remember it as it was.

When I look at the picture of the house, my home,

I see it as it is.

The panes of glass have broken, some have gone,

Shattered from kicked up stones, an errant bullet flung far from field,

The accidents of a thunderstorm, the violence of a tornado.

The glass is strewn throughout in jagged array, a viscious maze

No one wishes to travail.  A morbid curiosity propels them forward

But two footfalls and the dilapidated decadence sours them,

So they turn back.

The wind rolls through, dragging with it the dying leaves, a pussy yellow,

The skies are grey, I have embraced them.  I have lived with them the longest.

The branches are bare and they hold no fruits, no future echoed in a budding red.

The garden is gone.  All the planted perennials and the all too short annuals dug up or dead.

The snow comes but it doesn’t linger, it vanishes as it touches the dirt,

Leaving droplets of water, I call them tears, that pool in minute sorrow.

The wood is worn and stained with moss, a sickly green, non-committal and pale,

And the wood whines, the wind plays light chimes along the shards of glass,

And the hollow foliage husks beat percussive rhythms —

They whisper death, death, death.  I see it as it is.

But still, I say, it stands.