Shaken Tree
for H.C, C.C. and J.C.


The house by the eroding shore—
The house The Almost-Architect lived in—
The house The Domineering Diabetic lived in—
The house The Fashion Plate Old Maid lived in—
The dilapidated house on 1st Avenue—
I knew the house in all the ways
The Family named it—
but you called it
simply
The House.

You and she were the
jitterbugging martyrs
living to care for
The Domineering Diabetic.
(who The Family also named
The Cow and sometimes The Mountain)
At least that was The Legend
I was told in1966.

I hope the mange shared
in The Family’s
ad hoc meeting rooms
never spread past those covert
Doberman’s kennels
to your bright
little
chateaux by Savin Rock.

I couldn’t have known
while drinking
Foxen Park diet birch beer
with your mother
and creating painted
water marks on
the rangeland of her
bianco #12 paper,
that I would belong to
that luminescent clubroom
where all bookish brides
and all ineffable drakes choose to live—

I couldn’t have known that
I might one day become
the resumption of The Family
Folklore, supplicating
your description of
The Almost-Architect
with one of
The Obese Cheetah
or The Cosmopolitan Cowgirl
who offered no visual privilege
to anyone
in cranky rebellion
of The Family’s
Northeastern barbarism.

There we will be—immortal—
all of us,
shaken from our tree—
four chestnuts woven together.