Our Last House
       

From country to city, student ghetto
to suburban enclave, plotting
where we fit, we finally land

west of town, home at last,
among slash pines and water oaks,
Chuck-will's-widow, baritoned owls.

After we change the paint
and rearrange the art, I claim,
This is the landscape we were meant to own.

We admired our water feature,
windmill palms inside the lanai.
How did it all grow old?

Perhaps we tired of being crepuscular,
having given up on loving all night long,
expecting day jobs to define us.

Or feared native grasses' failure
to thrive beneath trees, mildew
blackening our doors,

despite cleaning after cleaning,
diluting gallons of bleach
sweating bullets in the heat.

Perhaps the crack in the floor
that betrayed settling did us in. Did we
settle for too little in eschewing guests,

just us, and the house
we could set fire to, claiming accident,
or sell as is, but who would buy it?

We keep dusting and scrubbing,
now and then look up, admire our views,
weigh how much to disclose.

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Copyright © 2020 Sarah Carey All rights reserved
from Accommodations
Concrete Wolf
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission