Sideducking Your Question

How odd I don’t paint the house in words. You love art and are eager

to see. I should show how the roof slopes like a fairytale house and now

we've built bay windows in every room where swans

etched in the panes are flying. Why in the world don’t I explain how

the bed in the bay on the main floor is a bed for you. Fits you

like the story of the three bears, just right!

How odd I don’t use my breath to portray the park on our street

where lovers & mothers & joggers repose above

the magnitude of Puget Sound, distant Olympic peaks, yellow roses.

Odd I don’t expound on the sidewalk flow of dog walkers & laughing

babies in strollers, show you the water bowl on our front lawn

where the word woof is painted in blue, where birds sip & bathe

& pups lap loose-lipped & grinning.

Details unspoken, I restrict myself to neighborhood houses &

the year we were built. Keep to myself the thousands of dollars

in property tax taxing the view, swallow my tongue like a premonition,

knowing you make do a continent away, reading scrunched-up

at your one window that barely bumps out the dark of your two little rooms.

Family Game

Little sister: cover your eyes

and memorize what I say.

I will tell you right off it is a kitchen filled

with the honey glow of cherry wood.

You should know the floor is gray tile,

the floor and wood are reflected

in the ceiling that is a mirror.

Mirrors defy boundaries, amplify infinity.

Step in. On your right at the threshold is the edge

of the white Corian counter above

a swing-out odd shaped shelf offering

peppers, vinegars, oils, and herbs.

On your left another swath of counter

is cluttered with life’s daily cups.

Keep eyes closed, slowly press your palm

against the counter

feel that it’s as cold

as our mother who used to cook here,

who chose to not bring to term her second child.

Listen, the autumn-red tree scrapes

the window, a Steller’s Jay repeats

as if his pitch black peak and body

of bright blue weren’t raucous enough.

His raspy laugh curdles a nerve.

I’m sure he laughs at me,

sees I am playing blind-mans-bluff

by myself, understands

no sister is reflected in this room,

knows I’ve been pretending

you, my best friend, in silence and forever.

Irresistible

Rain drops rest

faceted by streetlight

symmetrical, glistening

and graceful on the

Flowering Plum limb,

long,

wintered and bare.

Repeatedly

they lure, through the night

kitchen window,

my eye.

Rooms

The whole bedroom laughs, red walls undulate.

Chandelier prisms catch

and flick morning sun hysterically about. Windows

clap panes with glee, fling their shutter-mouths

wide to suck-in the pleasure of spring.

Even the bed

Is a room whose boundaries invite me to compose

my body. As my body’s ten trillion cells stir,

each cell is also a complete room

enclosed by a semi-permeable membrane.

This morning the cells are drunk on the dream’s wisecracks,

a good way to enter a day, laughing.

The day itself