The Erda house was the house of our dreams, the house we built together, the house in which we reared our children, the house in which we intended to grow old together, to which we would welcome our children and grandchildren for decades to come. But it was not to be. After 17 years in that house, that beautiful house, she asked me to leave, and the dream ended. And that house, she tells me, will soon be for sale, on the market. I wrote this poem to express my old hopes, my dreams, my memories, the agonies of human disappointment—as well as new hopes and dreams for a new future.

THE HOUSE

This is the house:
where
children scampered
through rough-ploughed soil,
pickup up stones and sticks
in advance
of the grumbling John Deere,
disking;
just two, he was,
in broad arcs running
around the house,
barefoot in Spring turf
with untroubled joy, screaming
“Whoopie Ti Yi Yo!”;
where
in that room, up there,
after church, we withdrew—
“Your mom and I need to talk.
Alone,” I announced,
and we talked a little
as we kissed and grabbed
and our eyes rolled back,
and the littlest sat,
her back to the door,
coloring, waiting
for the door knob to turn;
where
lightning sought
out the chimney
through the squall,
blackened outlets,
knocked out the phones;
her three-year-old voice
chuckled all callers:
“We’re not home . . . or
we can’t find the phone . . .
please leave
a message.”

This is the house:
where
our goats died,
our kittens died,
our dogs died,
the skunks and raccoons died,
and we buried them all
in the garden,
sprinkled with rose petals,
sprinkled with children’s tears,
tucked in with old sheets,
topped with stick crosses
that fell over,
covered over
with wild grass
and fast-spreading peppermint
and morning glory vines,
clinging and clambering,
obscuring the low mounds,
next the empty arbor
where the grapes would not grow,
where the rotting birdhouses perched,
houses for angry yellow jackets.

This is the house:
where
smoke oozing
from the chimney
meant a welcome fire
in the stove,
lighted by children
who sometimes forgot
to open the flue
with the sliding lever,
handled with a spring-like bulb
that burned its print
on your hand
at the base,
a welcome, hot, orange, roaring fire,
air hissing through
intake vents,
children lolling on the floor,
on the rag rug I wove
on a handmade loom
from thrift store wool skirts
cut in repurposed strips,
children staring, hypnotized
to happy stupor, waking
enough to ask
“should I put in another log?”
logs cut with Mathew’s
Husqvarna, borrowed
still after his heart quit,
lots cut from the ancient cottonwood tree
where the Bald Eagle once stood,
surveying, glaring
at my mere humanity
far below.

This is the house:
where
we built our chicken coop,
gathered warm pastel eggs,
clucked to the hens,
cut the head off
the devil rooster;
where
we planted our garden,
holding our breath for weeks
until corn blades
shot up, improbably,
pulling weeds, interminably,
sweltering under mid-Saturday sun
for more weeks until
we did not care anymore;
we knew tomatoes
by the red spots
in the green morass.

This is the house:
where
we sang campfire songs—
“Swing Low Sweet Chariot”
“White Wings”
“Springtime in the Rockies”—
roasted wieners, roasted apples,
threw the baseball,
chased the bolted goldendoodle pup,
freed the Black-chinned Hummingbird
from garage incarceration;
where
we cried and screamed and sang and laughed,
chased the goats
that jumped their fence,
found the neighbors’
black angus bull
in the back yard,
heard the Ring-necked Pheasant’s
“Er! Er!” in the man-tall grass,
heard the Mourning Dove’s
muffled wail;
where
we walked on cool evenings,
a family,
on the dirt farm road
named Rabbit Lane.

This is the house
that was mine
until you told me to leave,
told me to leave,
that was mine,
then was yours,
till you sold,
till you sold.
This
was
The House.

Roger is the author of Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road.  The book tells the true life story of an obscure and magical farm road and its power to transform the human spirit.  The book is available in print and for Kindle at Amazon.  See Rabbit Lane reviewed in Words and Pictures.