Welcome In

This home smells hard, like bread and trees,

its hallways painted dry leaf brown, with

dandelion strains and gently colored stems.

When sun slants down to meet us, we find

nighttime spiders' strands dangled down.  

No blue rain will fall for now.

                              God will not fix these things--autumn’s

noisy hinges, dragonflies who visit us

                              in morning, translucent curtains that reach

                              for the pond.  Ragweed continues to grow

on the sides of our slanting walls.  Each day

                              our feet find new soft places in the rotting floor

                              to settle in more deeply.  The gleeful dog

                              remains far back to sniff the pee

of recent animals, make tracks in

sunlight collected in pools, in

foot piles of small shadows and soft fallen

pine needles, calm and brown.

                              They tell him everything.  We have lived

                              far too long without anything, without 

good silence, without 

compassion toward the clear 

black pond who trembles
                              in her subtle glass skin,
                              sleeps contentedly, waits for
                              another chance to yawn indiscreetly,

not out of boredom, but in hope

that we might all learn to breathe.