Her house
Mrs. Thobois, it was her house.
Actually two, one above the other.
One for her, one for daughter on top.
The creek beside filled with myth.
Where it came, where it went, unseen,
unconsidered. Hard enough
just to cross what we knew,
that ocher pipe hung mid-thought
between.
The smaller house just above,
clinging to ivy and oak memory.
A knob at the edge of town.
Brown skin dusted with salt and sugar.
Marsha was her name, another one
of that flock watched over beneath her hand.
And I didn't even know the word for it
before that wind came blowing you from
town and me. Did I learn?
Waiting for a dusty bus, home from
visiting mother's orchard cross-town house,
I wander up that street, across the bridge
beneath the lap of that hill, and there...
Odd now to consider this,
this house for sale it said, call...
and I almost did.
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