entrances & exits
My brother's wife took me for a visit to her family's farm in southern Texas . Of course, I loved it as it reminded me of farming as a child growing up; not in Texas but Montana. There's something sad about vacant old rooms but lovely in it's stark simplicity. It looks like doorways & windows, but more about entrances and exits.
Green Farmhouse Chairs
In the back chamber, discarded things
of family jumble together…
I foresee an auction of broken rocking chairs
painted farmhouse green… eight stacked beds…
In my ninth decade
I daydream that it burns to the ground
so that nobody will empty it.
My children comfort me with their care,
bringing five grandchildren to visit,
but none will settle in the country.
I list the objects of this long house,
walking from room to room taking notes,
as if I controlled or determined
what happens to things after I die.
In June the peonies go rotten
and white old roses flourish briefly.
This wooden box beside my blue chair
was built by a cabinetmaker
to hold the toys of his first grandson,
my father, who died at fifty-two.
All day I sit silent and alone
watching the barn or TV baseball,
usually grateful for the hours
of isolation’s slow contentment —
but I long for days when daughter comes.
I ask, ‘What will you do when I die?”
I will sit in a chair for two years.”
My grandchildren’s grandchildren will know
nothing of a grassy cellar hole.
This house built two centuries ago in its anvil-forged spikes and timbers
contained its end in its beginning.
-Donald Hall
