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Frances Thompson

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House

 

They worked at clearing space, and built a house,
with plain walls, windowless,
a roof that pleased, woven and plaited against the rain,
and not much floor – just enough of it to brace and hold,
enough to lie on. Unlike other houses,

it was without clutter – the lines were perfect, the air pure
for a time, until the rot got in.
Then they should have pulled it down, or blown it up,
but they didn’t catch the drift until much too late
and all the damage was done; and they saw, too late

that they had ruled the lines too straight, expected too much
of clean corners, imagined themselves to be defence enough
against the sun, the summer wind and rain,
forgot that tides, tempers and seasons come, and worst,
had ignored the signs.

Alone again, she remembered
what she had always known – that a house is more
than promises and passion, more even
than the meaning of who sleeps where
and the décor of the living room. Yet

it was not until she had, years later taken down
from a high shelf, two still-alive green plants, and doing so,
disturbed a heavy mirror, that it came home to her.
Her fingers traced the carved oak-leaves
plugged with dust. She thought

We can and do inhabit magic castles.
She mentally shifted furniture, clocks, walls,
sliding them into their rightful, expectant places,
and out of her ragged, woven, roof there sprouted
dog-daisies, marigolds, heliotrope.

 

Page(s) 75

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