Thirteen Ways of Looking at a House
A house covers up everybody's problems.
A person walking by can't see
two people fighting in the kitchen.
A lot of people have lived in every house
What happened in that house
Forty years before?
--A murder committed in the kitchen,
A robbery in the basement.
When people built my house,
Did they mess up and maybe my house
Will fall from under me tonight?
There are parts of my house
That are not quite normal, like my bathroom,
Right by the dining room, used to be for the maid.
--I wonder if anybody ever died in my house.
I wonder if they died in my room?
Outside my house,
The tree is the biggest thing there.
The leaves die every fall.
And in the backyard,
Our rotting swing set lifts off the ground
Whenever you do.
My house is almost 100 years old.
It could have been a century ago
When someone was sleeping in my room.
Out the back door and down the stairs,
The old garage sits,
Falling apart, day by day.
--And in the garage, there is an attic
Where no one ever goes.
It's possible that a dead body
Is up there, but we may
Never find out.
The garage is old and dying
Like the rest of this old house,
And slowly, the people who live in it, as well.
--Nick Day
Writing from Student Author Night, Barton Open School, Minneapolis, MN, 2005.
This is definitely a limited edition volume--available for one night only in 2005. As I glance through it, I see names I remember of the students who passed through my doors, my face is full of smiles and my mind is full of questions. Where are these students now, fifteen years later?
Sadly, as I page through again, I see Samantha Hastings's name--one of our brightest and best who died in a car accident that also killed her father and seriously injured her younger sister. I believe the poem in this booklet might have been the one that was included in her funeral handout. I must include that poem too.
Wow. I thought this was going to be a quick and light-hearted posting for a Friday and now....
Nick's poem about ways of looking at a house has relevance for us now, as we spend more time homebound. Is your home revealing secrets? Are you hearing noises, uncovering mysteries or at least finding missing socks? If your house has been talking to you in any ways, blatant or subtle, will you share that with me?
And now...
Moonset
I'll tell you how the moon set
So silvery and white,
The Flowers waited tentatively
For Sun's bright joyful light
The Stars put on a morning show
Before they said Goodbye,
The Moon gave last its golden glow
Then sank beneath the Sky.
I know my Moon is somewhere else
She never really sets
Her beauty's there for all to see,
For in your Heart she's kept.
--Samantha Hastings
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