House

This rarity of house for which you made a choice

Opens its fish-luck door to passage of air.

Child-like island paintings beckon here there.

Whistle of kettle, built echoes are jazz noise.

Books ask to be read, they picture the world

Those windows hint at, squares of plum and elm.

Cat on cushion is averse to overwhelm,

That’s for the doona through winters, warm curled.

Kitchen’s the best room, pantry of spices,

Or bless’d studio maybe, laughter and quests:

Any room with habits rather than rules.

You don’t envy people with towers or pools.

You live in your own tower of charmed suggests,

Float from door to garden, free of devices.

House (December)

December, when my Jaroslav Seifert opens by chance on “only the river doesn’t age.” People we never saw sell their houses in the neighbourhood. Suppose they went to live in care, let’s suppose. Timber structures and cream brick foundations are dismantled in a week. Sentiment is all we see, their lives lived in the sun where “only the river doesn’t age.” Clearance levels their block to a rubble field. Suppose someone died and the family made arrangements, let’s suppose. In a month it will be blocked and babeled in the grand new beige style. Not much garden to speak of.