House of Dreams

This is a construction site I pass every day on my way into work (that's the front of my car at the bottom of the image). The man has been working on it for more than a year. For a while it was just a foundation. Than a bare frame. Then he added the roof. For the past week, I've had a few rough lines from a poem in my head as I pass. The last line was an accident. Precious, but I'm keeping it.

House of Dreams

Scratching dreams into the into the land is vexatious.

The music of saws, the percussion of thoom against thwang,

Such a paltry symphony against the motor roar,

The deeper room, room, room that delights in undermining

These matchstick bulwarks.

We've seen what happens to homes around here.
The farm house between the pecan trees
Replaced by a triple wide.
The white cottage beneath the huge old willow,
(Out near where Bonnie lives)
Left unpainted for one year too many, bulldozed under the next,
The grave markers behind left standing,
A choir without a church.

And that house behind the kudzu with the old man still in it--
Don't get me started on that.

Sit a moment, Marlboro in hand,
Straw hat against the sun; makeThe workman's scowl, consider
The plum line, the toothless smile of
The empty facade, the deep furrows, still raw
Though dug into the earth a decade earlier.
Then cut a board, nail a shingle, carry a brick.

I, too, have dreams I can't fulfill or abandon,
That demand the intimate service of hand crafting,
And though you hide it, I see,
As you pack up early, your joy
Knowing it still needs a little more work.