Farmhouse for Sale

The four facades of his heart;

the many faces of a dream:  the old house

and its sheds and barns.  Foursquare it rises,

solid, Victorian; greyly the outbuildings are collapsing

into frost-tossed tall brown grasses, huge bushes

of burrs, half an acre of swamp, a lost pond.

With windows symmetrical it faces the road,

and each direction; a balance belied inside

by strange arrangements of windows.  Re-roofed once,

only one chimney remains, three are truncated in the attic.

Attic and basement are full of cobwebs thicker than mascara

and older than any arachnid now alive.  Old too the oak

in the driveway, "second oldest in New York State,"

said the owner with almost a smile.

He would coax life back into this aging mansion,

not cozen it further into dotage.  Poking

into rotting building sills, he evaluates settlement,

dry rot, an underground gas tank;

over his ear the stub of a new pencil

ground quickly short by the engineering life. 

Armed with a penlight he braves the filthy cobwebs

and mildewed appliances in the basement. 

I cower at the foot of the stairs to watch,

then retreat upstairs.

                                    He would take this sleepy dreamscape,

wake it, almost roughly renew it,

until it was more his than any radiant bride.