The Holding House

She resides, not lives there.

Shelters of disrepute, worship,
even monuments to the conformities of era
may defy their blueprints.
Or in accordance with exigencies of style
rise for a time above neighborhood disrepair
as if the downdraft of decline
would not one day rest upon their rafters.

They are clumsy with their affections,
with no masonry against misery,
nor canticle of cantilever
to hold sway against sadness.
Hush the cold & distant stars with roof trusses
& currant wine drowsy upon the mantle,
hush with tongue-and-groove
burden-bearing timber.
Temporize Baby Elizabeth & Grandpa Eliza,
gone but for voices of rain against metal gutters
& the sagging of fasteners & fixtures
which make the dispossessed seem attached.

Place-memory, praxis of design,
creates archways for private act
in the fully braced settlements of habitation.
But beyond the books’ repose near northfacing French doors,
beyond the computer asleep in a darkened room upstairs,
beyond banal storyboards of passageways
there is progress, upheaval, transformation.
Yet it remains steadfastly within its weathered fences,
content to let sun & shadow play upon its sleepy parapets,
peeling-paint trellis & flourishing crabgrass in the front yard –
as if it had chosen its own destiny.

-- That she might fail as it fails,
cupboards loosened & hallways made ducts of decay,
symbols enclosed within creaking symbol,
noisy hinges & settling walls a musique concrète
of dispossession

-- That she might be left without lyric
joyless jamb & joist,
undone by unmoved walls
levitated by feint of facade,
-- must surely be without foundation.

(c) Dark 1998