Old House

by Armand Garnet Ruffo

The pictures on the stripped walls leave behind
their ghost imprint. At the funeral, the eulogy
slipped out of me. I found the words and thought
no more of it until I returned to you, old house,
and found myself rooted to the very spot I took
my first step. Nothing will ever again be the same.

Old house, with your boxcar walls, crooked windows,
sagging floor, leaking roof. Listen: I lay up half the night
listening to you storm and subside, and storm again,
carrying me to bottles and flying dishes, cracked skulls
and silence. Then the gust of birthday candles, fiddles
and guitars, and riotous laughter of all things.

It all comes so quickly, old house. Tell me how to hold
back the rising current, how to walk through your door,
and get on with it, as they say. Little me, there I am,
pushing myself into another day where I am both here
and there, like some kind of divining rod snapping awake,
jotting down things I can barely contain.