The story begins a hundred years ago,
notations in that fine antique hand,
the getting and losing of a piece of land
ending with us.
Two wives became widows in this house,
walked from window to window looking out,
shrinking in their dresses,
padding their shoes with Kleenex.
The lake was always there, the fog climbed the hill,
and the moon grew stout and thin
per the promissory note.
Teeth fell out, there was a divorce
(Solvieg got the house),
and at last the two children who fought so bitterly
had to “divide by equal shares, share and share alike”
the southerly 100 feet of lot 9 Endion Subdivision
together with all improvements.
It was the sister who stayed on.
It was she who saw the peonies through the dry year,
who took the broom to the wasp nest in the soffit,
who embraced those endless domestic economies,
and who penciled into the margins
padlock combinations, paint colors,
the Latin names of her perennials.
Her bones grew hollow like a bird’s
so that when it was time to fly
she had only to spread her old wool shawl
and drop the ballast of this abstract.