All Poetry Is Middle Class

It's as if our house had shrunk around us in thickening drifts. Curious walls lean in like a solicitation, or, less importune today, a confidence no words betray. The place fills with things as with light, a thumb pushing the pale dough full.

Somehow, having this place so long among pines has become us. We're the salvage that the house has gathered. At first, only for an accent beside the piled shelves, a flare of flowers, just there- and then more centrally, more needed- the only object that catches the light right.

Roots pulled from our knees, our heels, go down into these things. What surrounds us becomes us.

Carefully the cat, a patchy calico, goes along the windowsill. Inside, but looking out.