The Dwelling

TFR Home Page

Contents

Prev. Page

Comments

The Dwelling
By Robert James Berry

Three generations stay in
my house. The air crackles
with memories
the forgiven, and what cannot be
bobs like a cork
in seething silence.
Time has been misremembered
by skirting-boards, shins of the house

kicked in
webbed cornices,
so imaginative blotches
may mean something, or not.
A rotten dentistry of beams
hold the roof
doors moan arthritis, window
casements aren't all there
shouldermarks of the dead

shine.
It's a chemistry the
timber creaked and split
generations before
has healed now,
where I am lashed to a desk
pitted by adventure,
overgrown with scrawl
coffee rings and history.

Creation
on which my elbows dream
makes my bitten, inky fingers move.