TSM 179

~ qbit 
It's no secret, our old place
needed a tonsillectomy –
drafts wheezing down the front stairs,
horsehair plaster poxed and patchy
like a sore throat.

I know you hated it, 
your sleep uneasy for twenty years, 
a bad wire smoldering in your dreams.
Ours the only family
that had to practice fire drills.

The new bracelet for your birthday
has one stone for each squirrel
that died in the walls,
and one for the feral cat
living in the porch roof.

Let this autumn exfoliate 
our memory, shed old tissue for new  –
the leaves drifting down 
like dead skin, like paint peeling
from the siding.

The Sunday Muse

26 thoughts on “TSM 179”

  3. This is gorgeous…that smolder of worry and the stones for the dead squirrels are perfect glimpses of endurance. I can’t help but picture a gold chain of gravel cementing renovation dreams.

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  8. The sounds pile up nicely in this. The sibilance is evocative of winds and whispers and sets a mood that cogs into the overarching theme. Also, the contrast of the bracelet, like one in which each stone for a child born, but this for each death. The one for the feral cat is excellent – the wild within the house, the wild within the restless occupants… so much great stuff here! Oh, and ‘wheezing!’ Yeah.

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  10. It’s a wonder your old place didn’t implode like the apartment building in Florida. I can feel for YBO as Mrs. Jim put up with our old Plymouth Volare until it had 167K miles on it. The floor on her side had a huge rust hole and she was afraid the floor would all fall to the pavement while she was riding. Once we took it from Houston to the East Coast, up to New Hampshire via D.C. and NYC, then to Maine, Vermont, and New York over to Detroit on the Canadian side, and back down to Houston. The floor stayed put.
    ..
    ..

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  11. The detail here is what makes the poem for me, the horsehair plaster dust(I know it too well, ancient, dry, patched over thin lathing for the wind to dislodge) the stone for every dead thing in the walls, and the exfoliation at the end. really strong imagery, and a subtle sort of metaphor of the life of the people within as well. Enjoyed it very much.

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