The House on Main Street

The wrought-iron gate creaks, black paint peeled through to steel
open onto the path. We sit on groaning wicker chairs on the narrow porch
as the tourists stop, the neighbours clip, the hibiscus peering over the wall.
The thin path is short concrete cracked and willful. Dirt and grass
push past and through it
to a carpenter’s house. The shutters swing out
in front of louvers, the ceiling was pitched acutely
but still inside the heat is suffocating. The living room littered
with yellowing black and whites around the tired piano
it had had years of gently played Methodist hymns,
its keys resistant to fingers.

The corridor of faces watch as the old man meanders
in the kitchen, lamenting the damage done.
‘everything is all muddled up.’
New fluorescent lights hum softly over
the cracked and stained linoleum.
They had moved the furniture to the porch,
when they painted, the dresser next to the boxes
of things to throw or give away reeks of old mahogany
and we fan ourselves silently. The hibiscus
overgrows the wall now, waiting for the passersby.

2009