His room was big and clean and the scene from the window was cheap and stayed still long enough to be photographed correctly. Always one to check out the view from the window, to see what was framed away. All the same to stand still and look out upon this place that could be home. This place might be home someday, seeing shutters flanked by rows of fenced backyards, seeing a mother waving to him, seeing a red garter belt hung on a clothesline, seeing a pair of green stockings, seeing a pink slip dancing in the wind. And remembering The Reverend Monsignor passing by in his special car. These people in some way may become his -- uneasily his. The clothesline too, a simple clothesline. What a miracle of thinness sloping through the yard like a border between two countries, a border between two yards, a border between two persons side by side. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COUNSEIL TO A BACHELER by MARIANNE MOORE PROGRESSIVE HEALTH by CARL DENNIS ROOTS AND LEAVES THEMSELVES ALONE by WALT WHITMAN CESAR FRANCK by JOSEPH AUSLANDER THE TURN OF THE ROAD by JANE BARLOW |