The house is up for tender and will be sold.
Houses always sell – in the end. Even if it is
for the land. Smoking out or treading down
the haunts takes three days, or even longer.
A child always has a father even if the child
must learn to forgive that father for almost
everything. A father is just a man, just one
more member of our clan, one of our skin.
And the mother, a roomy doorway, a pathway,
a vivid gash – making the baby up as she goes
along. If she holds the little one too close to her
it will have to kick hard to make her let it go.
The brother and the sister and the cousin keep
all the secrets of how you used to be. Oh a long
long time ago. In the meeting place impossible
to prevent the family smell from burgeoning.
The tea slops into the saucer, the wine is opened
and poured into that glass of memories, that gift
that was given to a dead woman, before she died.
Some of us drink tea, and some of us drink wine.
The house will be sold, the broken window was
repaired a long long time ago, some of us will
die soon – some of us will turn over in our beds
and do what is needful to call the new one home.