THIS house that is not old or beautiful, these garden paths of weeds, those unkempt firs that I remember at their desolate swaying, their sad, soft drooping over this my home. The avenue, stony through the cracked brown gate, has one particular curve; upon its gravel a touch I did not find in other places. And all this house is crowded with my years — bare rugs, the pictures, hands on the banister, the family footsteps coming up the stair; voices in the kitchen, and the knives sharpening, and the scurry of the dog; the marked piano and the singing bowl; the chandelier jigging when fat Mary walks, and after dinner and we by the fire and drowsy, the slow talk then, words with a kernel love for each of us who are too seldom there. And outside it is green. I know the trees, the old, the young, the fallen, and the granite in the front field where all the pigeons come. The hills are clear from there. The hills, green, cold, familiar, and with the brief, unhappy winds bending the heather, clinging in my hair. I know these places. I am made of them, deeper than words, and words can never say. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WORDS IN A CERTAIN APPROPRIATE MODE by HAYDEN CARRUTH WHEN THE SPEED COMES by ROBERT FROST GETTING A WORD IN by JAMES GALVIN WE CAN'T WRITE OURSELVES INTO ETERNAL LIFE by DAVID IGNATOW GUARDIANSHIP by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |