EDGE BEFORE THE FALL

 

The house speaks.

Aloneness after lunch.

Ants in between

the tiles above the sink,

the dark and now the light,

the home they’ve found,

a swarming sudden crowd

in their crowding blues,

in this chink of time,

on their own straight line.

I must get rid of them

( what would you do?)

I can’t be covered yet

by crawling silence.

 

The house speaks.

A leak from upstairs

and drops on the armchair

and the dog leaving it,

just annoyed or scared,

it’s the neighbor I learn,

ninety-six, he has messed

with the shower. Who helps him?

I wonder, in this house that speaks.

 

I am alone in it. In my beloved

desert lot. That’s it.

And I am still alive.

I didn’t choose to be alone

( and I didn’t choose to be alive either).

Life happens as it happens,

God knows, or does he?

Life happens

like a house that speaks.

 

In its many leaks.

I listen in the night to noises

that might be unspoken words,

in the pressing of the walls

and a silence of my own.

I’ve grown yes, I’ve grown.

And ripeness is all.

 

The house speaks.

And maybe I am bound

to love the unknown.

I am perched on my own

edge before the fall.