House Keeping
The house seems to have grown here,
pushing up blocky and square-shouldered
out of rock ledge, blunt and buck-stubborn.
No delicate spindled porch rails or winsome
window trims. Not for this one the frills
of the maiden Victorians across town.
This house knows its mind, iron-willed
as my no-nonsense grandmother who
put her faith in serviceable shoes,
believed that moral fiber came of
floor-scrubbing, backaches, tough meat.
Flinching in the face of adornment,
my house sulks, mulish behind a facade
of flaking paint. I probe it for history,
for danger, the way I tongue the hole
in a tooth, study a mole for signs of change.
I open and close its windows and doors,
enter and withdraw like a lover asserting
possession. The house holds its silence
like a hard woman, its secrets in a closed fist.
The house seems to have grown here,
pushing up blocky and square-shouldered
out of rock ledge, blunt and buck-stubborn.
No delicate spindled porch rails or winsome
window trims. Not for this one the frills
of the maiden Victorians across town.
This house knows its mind, iron-willed
as my no-nonsense grandmother who
put her faith in serviceable shoes,
believed that moral fiber came of
floor-scrubbing, backaches, tough meat.
Flinching in the face of adornment,
my house sulks, mulish behind a facade
of flaking paint. I probe it for history,
for danger, the way I tongue the hole
in a tooth, study a mole for signs of change.
I open and close its windows and doors,
enter and withdraw like a lover asserting
possession. The house holds its silence
like a hard woman, its secrets in a closed fist.
