The Old Haunt

I left calculated paw prints
on white carpet
front entrance and back
an arc showed my search for someone
who would recognize me among the chintz.

None did. Yet I am permitted
to return to this house cleft into the hill
often. And I do, in many guises, enter here
searching for a place called home.

At the cold hearth longsince
silent, rundlestone broods over ashes
and all the plants are darkest green
their long shadows reach across marble tables
rosewood, ornate antique chairs, all quiet
in evening twilight. Frost rims
and sparkles on fencelines meant to keep
bulls from the courtyard. Tonight
I am a young woman
who turns the latch, pulls the wood door,
and pushes outside
listening to their soft munching, bunchgrass.

Maybe it was the ghosts who yearned for firelight,
took up the white carpet, left tile and bamboo cork.
They’ve used poplar and birch logs stacked
on the lee side of the chimney, ultra genteel.
In the morning, who comes
except me, wearing field boots.
Trailing bracken, willow fen debris, they indicate
the long way round, an entrance where boots
can be left on the step, as if their dreams
perpetually cleaned, laundered, ironed,
could find redress in my newly awakened
sense of place among them.

At the cold hearth longsince
silent, rundlestone broods over ashes
and all the plants are darkest green
their long shadows reach across marble tables
rosewood, ornate antique chairs, all quiet
in evening twilight. Frost rims
and sparkles on fencelines meant to keep
bulls from the courtyard. Tonight
I am a young woman
who turns the latch, pulls the wood door,
and pushes outside
listening to their soft munching, bunchgrass.

White bulls in moonlight, ranging across the fields.