This Old House

Let me tell you a story
of how a friend became an enemy
in a very short time

But first let me shift my weight for--
There are anniversaries to be--
mourned
present days to be--
celebrated

She is growing on me.
Today I spent on my knees
scrubbing her feet
She's lived my 27 years
plus 72.Next year there will be
100 parties
rain or shine,
in solo or community,
to commenmorate her
century.

Many have come, many have
gone
I am but a breath of her life
Many have come, many have
gone

She has learned to hold no grudges.
And she knows she's in love
when she desires to watch you
grow old. John claims that she
likes me and that all who come
between her walls utter,
"Cozy"

I felt her forgiveness before
the plee came to my lips
She's been around too long to hold grudges.
She knows
the housing of negativity within
her wooden chest-of-walls
only excels the bleeding process leading
to death.

I don't believe in speaking
negativity, hatred, discord
into matter. For
when I was a child I beleived
my stuffed animals would
come alive, and I believed the
tiger in the poster would step
down from her perched position
on my wall, all to near to my head
And who really wants to piss off
a tiger before falling into
vulnerable sleep?

She tells me I am weird
and I find this odd
"You're not like this?"
And here we are
I was going to write about this time last year but
I have found myself
varnishing the floor
with red wine instead.

Lord,
you have brought me so far
Mother,
there is no need
No,
no need to worry
I have been through the rivers,
I have been through
a sea
and I have come out the other side
resurrected like the calli lilies
And someday

I will write in my
mid-eighties like Florida Scott-Maxwell
"You need only claim the events of your life
to make yourself yours.
When you truly possess all you have been
and done...
You are fierce with reality."

And that in the Measure of My Days
will be
(816)

A Death blow is a Life blow to Some
Who till they died, did not alive become--
Who had they lived, had died but when
They died, Vitality begun -Emily Dickinson

“Statics, Hugo, is the study of the equilibrium of forces, of stress and strain in supporting structures. Without statics you can’t even build...”

None of the girls would be happy,
the light is sweet,
about the decision we decide to make,
it pleases the eye to see the sun,
I don’t know what I am doing,
however many years a man may live,
I can’t tell what I am feeling,
let him remember the days of darkness,
Who is this “I” we strive to know inside? Inside each.
for they will be many.
Everything belongs.
Everything to come is meaningless.

Stamp you feet little bird, this
is one of those questions
to be lived, never answered.
I want to ask you old man,
how to be fully in and no longer trapped?
I would like to ask you old woman,
for guidance, for help, for discernment, for patience—
pleading for a word.
I can feel the bridge move with each preverbal step,
I start jumping and a particle of a rumor of wisdom
breaks as I start to walk again.
She whispers,
‘If you do not bend you will break.’
“I got to my feet, fell again, again got up and doing this jerked skin and shirt apart, stuck them together, pulled them apart, over and over, and the pain, like thorns being stuck in my back again and again, made me half lose consciousness.”

They were married some years now
decide to build a house together
decided to go down to the river and wait.
She is dead now 40 years
and he, where is he?
Down by the river still waiting.
“She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.”
“She died the day we were to move in.”
He liked to talk to me, to tell me stories,
One day we were going down in to town so I asked him,
“You want to go downtown and look for some ladies?”
“I don’t know why I would bother looking, I already had the prettiest girl in the world.”
I don’t know why I would bother.
“Give back your heart to itself, the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.” –Love After Love

“...the pain was greater pride I took in my wounds.”
In a deep bittersweet voice healing from the resentments,
daily sometime moment-by-moment forgiveness and embarrassment
this is what I say,
There is a voice that creeps up to my side
as each friend, stranger and neighbor
steps on this cut
of earth.
Once by my side it strives to grab
my attention by whispering,
‘You fool, you fool.’
Embarrassment will flood this body
if you ask me to tell you a story.
With a consent open wound a bloody
reminder. And I feel foolish and dumb,
childish and insecure, petty.
Yet I feel a deep root in my body
and these roots as much as I despise them
arrange the direction I lean and stand.

I want to fix these, get past these, but most of all
if I can’t fix or get past
I want you not to dictate my behavior
or how I feel inside.
‘Go by, go by, go by don’t come inside
go past smash the wall behind my back
slither to the floor-go by, go by.”
I want to feel redeemed, that I have learned
and even grown a gray hair, a strand of wisdom or insight
from this mess of a year.

“I’ve made a lot of choices
Most have not been wise
But I have some really good friends
I’ve been fortunate enough to find”

“I felt no desire to calculate the differential of their kindness, to count off the rosary of my pain.”