Old Houses

Barn-red redwood house filled with memories
of the sort only recalled in the pit of your stomach
or drowsing in the big leather chair at sleepless 3 AM.
Insubstantial, made of stone, warm as amber,
or ossified old chewing gum on a fence post
mineralizing in the mountain sun
through long years of forgetting.

Redwood floor boards languish under avocado
green shag carpet. We shared the cold linoleum 
in the kitchen, spangled beige and aqua, sage and rust.
The ancient switch for the porch light, defunct before time began,
from my earliest days I would compulsively flip it on
then off, then on again half expecting a miraculous 
fusion of dead wires, a flare of living light
from the spider-filled dusty jam jar fixture.

A joy of hummingbirds besieging the fuchsia
by the lopsided kitchen screen door, 
all the pulling up and the planting, the thinning
of fruit. Pruned limbs stacked drying for the grill
waiting to be cast into the flame, but what sweet smoke
from apples that would never come.

Lost gardens, who can find them? Ghost
gardens still etching formal patchworks 
under suburban lawns, faint traceries of willow
fence and wire from futile attempts to ward
away the deer, those eternal foes of settlement
perfectly adapted to parasitic city life, 
feeding on the roses that will never yield perfume,
wasted in the backyard, human attention 
riveted on the blue glow of multitudinous 
little screens.

But out there in the moonlight
beside the ruins of a rough shed
wonders of civilizations dead
and passing, filled with heady scent
the night. Moonflowers, gas-plant waiting 
for a Victorian match to give its little illuminating flare,
Love-lies-bleeding, Bells of Ireland, all the faded seed catalog
fare of a vanished age. Skeletal frames of hollyhock,
snapdragons lingering past their time, sunflowers 
that will not stop returning,
Good King Henry and goosefoot.
Revenant beauties, vanishing wonders, dwindling delights.

Better Days, California, 2010