Poem 69

Published in Islands 36 November 1985, the year after I’d completed the Original Composition course with Bill …

( I like the crisp weightless heart of the wasp’s nest … and the idea of archaeologists delicately uncovering a kind of relationship Pompeii … )

Our House

This is a house built out of cups of tea
this is a house of machinery
this is a house where the openings and closings
of the venetians heliograph a message
passed on down the street

this is a house of character
meaning there is something wrong with the doors
this is a paper house like a wasp's
a crisp weightless heart

this house is blind windows glaucoma white
the feathery ash that set in the rains
buried us only lightly
then as if the whole mountain had shifted down
this house is perfect
ready to be peeled and shown
if anyone is interested in what lies underneath the eruption

this is the house of our love
with enough rooms to never see you
with a chalk line rubbed out and redrawn
with an insistent
tapping/
               the unstoppable leak
or the sound of experts
with dental precision
chipping towards the walls