Old House

09 July 2021

I walk down old avenues,
aware again of impermanence,
perennial friend of the weary,
and stop before the family house.

What otherworldly dominion is this,
where manflesh met with womanflesh
to make me?

Yet other worlds must be,
or else our high anxiety
is treason of another kind.

It asks us, whence these beams,
this wood, this angled frame
with memories of forest?

What cold river brought us here?
If not the Thames, the Mississippi?
Say the Susquehanna, rolling slow.

And yet, don’t answer.
Let me linger here, and grieve,
until our waters are surpassed.

Old house made new,
another world’s anxieties
are haunting you.