On The Street Behind My Office - #3 - The Corner House

We drove up
and it was all new –
my dress, your suit,
our house,
our love.

We laughed at our sheer and perfect luck.

It was neat red brick -
high-gabled,
dormers looking down
onto quiet, rustling tree boughs
and scalloped woodwork
bright with fresh paint.

I walked into the kitchen
and when I looked at the gleaming, bare floor
and walls,
the new white stove
and the round-topped little refrigerator
with it’s shining, frigid shelves –
all I could see
was the table we’d have
and it would be heaped with food,
and the faces around it
would be varying smaller shades
of you
and me.

A week into the house,
you pulled up in that new car.
And I squealed with surprise
and hugged your neck.
We drove around the block
and down the street -
and didn’t come back
until after midnight
and kisses and hamburgers
under the starry skies
at Centennial Park.

I couldn’t decide between
daffodils and tulips for the front walk
and so I planted both.
And the second spring
they made me giddy
with a hundred glancing tints
of red and yellow.

We had 20 perfect winters and falls -
cozy inside,
with you and me
alone.
But it was always
Enough -
and more -
it was plentiful.

But there came a summer
when the blooming stopped.
And you were silent and still.

I stood alone
in the front hall
after the service
and the quiet pounded
on my eardrums.
It clattered across the tree-canopied back yard
and as I locked the gate
behind that mellowed & weathered black car,
I knew that purring old engine
would never feel the touch
of a key again.

They offer me laughable sums now.
But I refuse.
Both for the house
And car now overgrown with vines
and bricked in by lanky trees-of-heaven.
It will never move again.
And neither will I.

I will wait.

Occasionally stepping outside
to let the wind sift through my hair,
now white and thin.
I smell the tulips
and the daffodils.
And they call to me to embrace them.
It’s hard to reach them beside the front walk,
but I am happy
to know they are there
and to smell their presence.

Yes, within this corner house -
I have been -
and am -
happy.
Full and complete.
And I smile
into the sunshine
as it passes over.


Written 10-5-06 about the elderly lady in the house across the street from the back of my office