House

These days I’m still adrift,

captain of a childhood tub

that wishes it were a skiff.

 

Someday I’ll shipwreck & wash up

on a shore just strange

enough to do. Kneeling in foreign muck,

 

I’ll build a house, shingle to hinge.

Like this. Four walls, each brick a word.

Slant rhymes for roof-slats, arranged

 

in terza rima to keep rain out. Hard

truths for muntins & panes.

Each door a creaky metaphor from cupboards

 

to closets. Ideas grand & mean

will waft from the beanstalk

chimney like a kitchen kettle’s whine.

 

And in the garden, silk-

petaled inspirations will puff

& bloom with incessant talk.

 

Lydia Friedman is a nineteen-year-old time traveler who once went on a blind date with a marble statue in Vienna. She lives in New England and can be reached by howling into the void, or at www.crookedbutinteresting.wordpress.com.