The Owner is Leaving this House (after the poem)

The Owner is Leaving this House

The owner is leaving this house

the slow way, giving it time

to get used to her absence.

She moves a painting, a table,

(a small one), not so much

that the house would notice-

though the guest feels a draft

and notices a window uncovered.

A coffee pot's missing, the top

left library bookshelf is empty.

The bright rooms aren't dimmed,

really, but dusted, as the pollen outside

slightly powders late April-

drifts over wisteria

on its way out.

This house must be suspicious

at least of a season changing,

Of something going on .

Elizabeth Seydel Morgan

               That was the second truck load from the third trip back to Georgia. Four or five months later, and we're still only halfway there. We've had a good long time to get used to the idea of moving. We call it downsizing, consolidating, living our dream. But we measure it plate by plate, glass by glass, book by book, box by heavy box.

In addition to packing our things, we've been organizing, folding and cushioning the memories of our years there. We designed and built the house to suit the life we had constructed in the country.  

It was the best of the old and new; an homage to what was practical and graceful about turn of the century farm house style with an eye towards modern ease and simplicity.  

It was bringing the outside in to view by bringing an old beveled glass door or two back to life. 

It was crowning the classic triangular dormer with the seldom sold colored glass window of that same vintage. We picked each piece of molding, each door knob, door, light fixture, window, cabinet, counter top, tub, tile with intent to treasure the past while looking forward to the benefits of the present.       The treasure was the thing, and the process of finding the thing, and fitting the thing into our lives.

 

Now with a final glance down the hall or twist of a knob, we will move on to another's homemade home. We'll make a few modifications there. We'll figure a way to make it fit. The furniture, that is. 

But she's right. "...Something is going on". Of all the things we've decided to build or dismantle, it is beginning not to matter so much. Our age- our aged focus- has changed. We can give and take on the filtered furniture. Fewer pieces mean more grand baby toys. Fewer collected electric fans mean less shelf dusting. Managed space now belongs to small shared sentimental items, large baby paraphernalia and family themes.

I am pretty sure by now our house is more than suspicious. But we are hoping that the new owners will be reassuringly gentle when it comes to doorknobs and molding. Maybe they could also be obsessively detailed about the plant material enveloping the acres, or fall in love with the rock formations in the pine woods. Figure a way to make it fit. If they need it, I could tell them such stories.

On the Waterfront (for Susan)

 

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: 

it goes on.” Robert Frost 

It's been a while since I sat down to the keyboard. Funny thing. I have much more time now than I used to. But the minutes and hours and days between pressing work have been unsettling. I now can catch my breath, but have had to completely stop to recover my words.

Retirement is not relaxation. It is a process that is hard work. So much of who we are revolves around what we do. When that stops, it leaves an anxious, vacuous, ghostly quiet, full of questions I could no longer answer easily, and lists from down deeper that needed making. So I've been letting those waves catch up to me; wash over me; push and pull me along as I find my footing. 

I missed the plants. 

I was sure the plants missed me.

I had learned to read time in the 

tips of buds, 

swelling from one day to the next,

in the phases of the moon across the weeks and months,  

in the changes of light and colors across the seasons.

Lucky for me I landed at the water.

"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), 

it's always our self we find in the sea."

- E.E. Cummings

Slowly I am finding my way back.  It's all here to be rediscovered and reincorporated. Moments are measured by the swell and ebb of the waves, or an unbroken shell on the beach. Hours are metered by the building clouds, lowering sky, that final shaft of sunlight, the cool calm colors of clearing. 

  

The moon is still here waxing and waning across the days and weeks. The sun still calculates the angles and degrees of the seasons.  

The natural world holds me captive, and continually captivated by the details.

The questions are all inside. The answers are there, too. My lifeline has always been my sweet, ocean going fisherman of a husband, who is ecstatic with our relocation.  I have found buoyancy in the smiles of my grandchildren. They, too, help me refocus on the horizon, with changes, small, smaller, and huge.  

 

While I float a bit to find my bearings, I am right where I need to be. Stroke, breathe, stroke. I'm almost there.

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost