My childhood house is stripped,
bared, open to the public.
The for-sale sign impales
the front pasture, grass
is cut and prim, no trimmings
left to save.
Women in sable parade
through halls and men in
tailored suits talk about
dimensions. They don’t know
lizards present themselves
on the basement stairs or worms
dapple pears in the orchard.
Doors of rabbit hutches
hang from hinges and rust
scratches on rust in wind, noise
unheard by workers who
remodel the old farmhouse
into an Italian villa painted peach.
Death can empty a house of shoes
worn and new, of children
who climbed the grandfather
trees, impressing outlines like fossils
littering the banks of the creek.
Copyright © 2016 by Margo Taft Stever. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 23, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.