Near Fourth and Fourth

Behind your tiny, lavender house

was an unconstrained field, maybe

littered with rusted nails and broken

bottle shards still stuck to a sliver of label,

“Mickey’s” or “Old Style,” green

or brown glass, depending. The

tiny, lavender painted house,

its central marred wood staircase leading,

I dreamed, to your

unkempt bed. What need was there,

living alone, to make the bed? Why

not leave the lilac sheets hanging

over the carved footboard?

I left the request tucked neatly in the black iron

box beside the door,

lace stretched behind glass, all six feet.

And now, years later, I envision the

bushel you carried of bright curly hair

still looking out

that high bedroom window, over the

uncurated expanse, bounding back two, no four

hundred yards in a down town so cramped. It

stretched so far and past it a highway

and then a train depot with you,

you surveying it all

from the upstairs bedroom window. Preparing

to write. Preparing to bring

something unseen into the world.

--RFRY, 07 Aug 06

This is v2 of Near Fourth and Fourth.