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.