Out here on Discovery in the song light
of another long day walking sheets
through the blade and drawing shapes
upon the bare walls of the house
my children will someday return to
as strangers and maybe for a moment
remember the summer I worked
like a madman, the land and the house so new
to them every turn was a revelation,
and the well dried up and the cats
each day tossed field mice in small arcs
above the grass like confetti while the boys
tore through the yard on a rush of home
picked berries, feral almost they were
in their joy, every cut close to the bone—
the days of one step forward, four steps back,
stumbling about with the clatter
of hammers and blades, wondering
over clearances and systems, seeing visions
of plumbed lines behind walls
tapping out a slow leak, or a dream
of whatever rot there was
already written into the story of the house;
What it was to want to own and then to wear
the worry of ownership, to wear and try
to shuck it off to chase the boys
around the lawn only to find my father’s voice
coming from my mouth directing
them through tasks with the same measured
calmness that wore me thin when he spoke,
and even as I was returned to myself
I could see no other way to be
and so focused on the small joys:
opening the faucet slowly to the sweet
run of water filling a glass, imagining
the aquifer below us, the well, the pump,
the passageways through which the water
travels, through which it will
continue to pass, and in those moments
I spoke the final words of a poem:
nothing in this world is ours
as we strolled through the mossy paths
of our woods, nothing in this world is ours
to the broken toy, to the broken tool,
to the dead mouse, the dead rabbit, nothing
in this world is ours to the wasted food,
to the hole in the wall, to the wall itself,
nothing in this world is ours whispered
to my boys, my wife asleep in the loft,
my hands passing over the unfinished
work, as I wondered how it would feel
looking back over and over my own flaws
as I made my way through the years,
even the smallest of errors apparent—
I stood there at my life and touched
the edges and wanted to love everything,
even the time it took to get here,
and for a brief moment felt exactly
what I knew I would never have.