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I’m settling, I’m settling
into the blues
and the slow
where the easy comes
and the wild things
know
there can be no paradise
for the low
the blown off
the bitter
or the skin-thin mean
no paradise
no garden place for them
whose noses poke
through broken screens
on porches where
the welcome mat was sold
at some cheap yard sale
years ago
and furnishings inside
what most of us once saw
as good times, party house
though none of us was really
all that happy, more like beetles
skittering and watching
for the shadow of the boot
afraid the day might come
when that big ugly footwear fit…
oh, damn, I lost my train,
where was I taking this?
—the furnishings, that’s right,
the trappings in this house
that seemed like home to me
amounts to little more now
than some broken springs
and gashes on a wall,
early scribblings unread
and stashed in corrugated boxes
thudding time with bats and rain
through rafters redesigned
by termites into sky lights
thank the blues
these mother loving, ever
faithful, forward strumming
blues, the only flow with grit
and heart enough to clear
the rear view mirror, show
me people, times, and places
not as pretty or as close
as they appear once more
once more, before I go
~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2015
The image is of poet Robert W. Service’s cabin in the Yukon. I’m not sure who took the photo. Happily, the former home of one of our Canadian treasures is well tended.
Oceantics 
you at your best. wise and easy flow. and a wry grin.
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aww, thank you, b! 🙂
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The economy of short lines reinforces the haunting emptiness and sadness that builds as your lines sing the rhythms of loss. Although I couldn’t quite place it as I was reading, I could hear echoes of a well known poets voice, Frost perhaps. So I was delighted to read your reveal with the photo. It sent me scooting to read some of Sevice’s lesser know poems and to spot a place or two where you had used similar devices as he, The repetition of a word, sprinkled as sparingly as pepper; the parenthetical self awareness like a dash of salt made this a fine breakfast read, Elaine. I have to wonder though if termites might not gnaw instead of redesign.
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hehe, Russel, I second-guessed myself on the use of termites redesigning rafters (which are really just beams, already spaced apart) and landed with two justifications: 1) rafters is a fine sounding word used metaphorically to represent ceiling, roof, what protects us from above, and 2) the long i sounds of redesigned, termites, and skylights achieved that repetitive drone I was going for. So hang you, literalists. 🙂 As Service might say. Thank you for your kind comments, and I’m pleased this sent you to the man himself. It’s been a fun week getting to know him.
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Got me! If Eliot and Ferlinghetti could have had a child … 😉
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Wow, thank you, Mikels! I’m blushing… 🙂
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I enjoyed this Elaine; unexpected in a way because very different in form from some of the poems you’ve given us recently.
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Thank you, John! Yeah, these were new waters, for sure. There were more than a few lines where I had to pause to catch my breath, and not fall in. 😉
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