1 — The Stairs on Seventh Street

Something troubled those stairs

on Seventh Street.

Treading up and down ten times

a day from the start –

innocent to the house but not

to myself – I felt them: ghosts

at the gracious landing half way up,

oscillating in the air, hinting at the turn

to the last four risers,

gliding into the solid quadrangle of rooms

into the scent of lemon oil and pine,

sweet pungence I think they craved

from the after life, when all the bounty

between births and deaths

resides unreachable and tantalizing.

I felt for those ghosts and what they missed,

their soft restless hands

along the wall. We stripped

loud paper, undid unsteady rails as if to calm them,

rolled on subtle stripes, attached firm brass

and still they wandered unresolved and

waiting for the new ones, the ghosts

that came with me.

 

 

          2 — From the Walkup on Avon

We know you struggle to forgive yourself,

even now, all the moons having

filled up and ebbed, your star-crossed womb

and useless motions, and always us —

the two of us –

first December, when

you wept on a ladder, furious,

toying, tempted, dizzy –

– just

kick it out

from under –

but of course you didn’t, always wanting

yourself.

Instead you stayed up there, forced a shaky

balance on the top rung, and darkly joking,

shoved Christmas bulbs on hooks

into the porous ceiling, bitter flash

back at you in the gleam and glow; and

after that,

your body’s secret swells and ancient clench

half sick with vertigo

and everywhere Madonnas, your wrath

And then April, when it happened again,

in the mocking nectar of bloom

And grow. You don’t want to say much more:

So much ended that green spring,

no room for irony on Avon Street.

And still we haunt you, filigree spirits,

failed fruit that never drops.

 

 

          3 — From the House on Maxine

It is possible to see clematis

on weathered fenceposts

and not think “death.” It is possible

to see morning glories clamber,

lascivious and asplendor, up spackled

stucco and not think “loss.”

It is possible to sit in summer grass

counting fireflies and not think,

“despair.”

It is possible to go out back in the

dimming dusk, just when ochre

shines up from the inside lights

and not think “fear.”

It is possible to drink in

roofbeam, porch and eave,

to see it all,

and say, no ghosts. Not yet.

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