Our legacy, cracked plaster, uneven floors
 and other people’s objects: beaten biscuit table,
a century unused, ornate and unreliable
grandfather clock, velvet love seat
too cramped for the modern rump.  

We repair, reupholster, shore up, over
and over. We restore the pretentious portrait
of the disengaged grandmother.  We empty the bottle
of scratch cover, daub with marker, denying
the sharp claws of the years.  

The scarred and charred floors confirm the legends:
the indoor raccoon, the fire an aunt set
to force a move to town. No, no ghosts
walk the halls at midnight–not slaves,
not the tenant felled by the tree he was felling.  

The people pass, the things persist, and nature lies in wait. 
The irony of what remains:  the least loved. 
An embossed book–pages uncut–On Decorum. 
Left out as a curiosity, it turns
the tables, establishes itself.  

A creek rises under the foundation,
mildews shelves above, rots out beams.
A sink hole opens to the east, a wishing-well.
Site of an ancient outhouse?  We fill, fill
again, but it’s still caving in.  

Dissolution can only be delayed
and something in me begins to flow, an urge
to break, open, and unleash whatever
will topple the place, so I can float out
of even my own aging body, unburdened.