We No Longer Have To Take Off Our Shoes

Doors are left open and the cellar light on
but nobody cares. Booted footsteps echo
through the empty house, like a burglar on the take
for we no longer have to take off our shoes

Bird at the window, a mirror breaks

broken glass swept into a corner—

seven years of sadness lie in wait

though we no longer have to take off our shoes.

 

Grandmother’s hand at my back as I climb up the stairs.

Drawers emptied of playsuits, notions, and books.

The railing wobbles under my hand as I climb down the stairs

to a kitchen emptied of aprons, lemon drops, extracts and pots.

Efficient emptying. There was no time for crying.

 

Crumbled brick from a sledge under the mantle he set

over the wood stove he filled till he could fill it no more.

The one loose brick that stubbed our toes

lies buried under a rubble we can no longer put back.

But we don’t have to take off our shoes.

 

Cut grass blown against the house clings

like barnacles to a hull, Birdfeeders are empty

and crows fill the trees.The maw from uprooted 

lavender is raw and wet.

Get over it, we’re told,

but the columbine and narcissus are fighting for air.

 

The rose climbs out of it, sturdy as a tree.

It holds on to the house (as old as the house),

roots embedded in the structure.

She trained it that way.

 

The purple body of a nestling

lies crumpled on the sidewalk

and a dead mouse is curled on the cellar stairs,

littered with windfall and careless debris.

 

The bewildered dog lies in the middle of the driveway

and a cat drinks from a puddle.

Hidden hostility punched a hall in the wall.

We no longer have to take off our shoes.

"Passions Stamped on Lifeless Things", so begins the prompt from dVerse  (the poets pub) for us poets and writers to focus on history. To write about any object, ship, house, building, or palace but with a link to history and the past. Notice the Stetson? Another story.

Thank you for reading and thank you Merril Smith at dVerse for enticing me to pull this one out of the archives.