What Will I Inherit?

The rooms are empty now,

     and yet the floors and walls are steeped in memories

How do we keep them?

How can we ferry them across the generations?

I want to salvage what I can, 

     before the doors lock behind me

I want to scour the house for some good thing

I want to savor that smell

I want to retrieve some small ember 

     of the warmth that once gathered here

I want to drink from the family well

But the house has grown cold

The well is almost all dried up

The life has been eking out of the cracks, 

     dispersing across the country,

     gathering in other homes,

     digging other wells.

The rooms are empty now

Only relics remain

So what can I ask for? 

What will I receive?

Is there anything left for someone so far away?

Something that will smuggle out of the country 

     a lifetime worth of trips 

to Grandma’ and Grandpa’s house?

The bricks and mortar are staying put

The foundation strong but immobile

     too burdensome for transport to another context

Anyway, left to someone I hardly know… so

I want the crawl space in the unfinished basement,

That small clearance, where only children can stoop, 

     and with a scoop of imagination,

          create a stage for heroes 

               with socks for skin and hands as bones.

Please, just bag it up, this tiny magic place, 

     and send it overseas,

And I shall grow from it another house, 

     with soul, and spirit, 

          and living, breathing, pulsing stones

No chairs, no tables, no rugs or cupboards,

No beds, no paintings, no pillows or covers

     none of these will fit in my check-in luggage.

Every item too big, too cumbersome, too heavy a load,

     So...

May I just have the alligator moat?

That space between the beds upstairs,

     which flowed with crock infested, rushing waters

Just throw them in a little boat, 

     those make-believe reptiles snapping at our legs,

          as we jumped from one mattress to the other.

And let them rough it on the Ocean Seas,

     until they find their way back home to me

The table is taken

The plates are packed

The glasses gone

So, may I have the wet twinkle in my uncle’s eyes?

Can I have the belly laughter that rolled 

     through the dining room?

I’d like to have Grandma’s soft, lilting, reading voice,

     and Grandpa’s raspy, enquiring interjections

I want to keep the stories

     of younger years and days of old

And if someone else should claim the silver 

     and the gold

I want to have the tales of sorrow 

     gone untold

Especially those 

     tales of sorrow gone untold.

When the shelves are empty 

     and the closets bare

When the lights are off

     and the fire has burned out

When the house lay dark

     and cold as a tomb

And there’s nothing left

     but the elephants in the room

Let me take that invisible herd,

     that has been there as long as I remember

I’ll slip them past customs unseen,

     fly them to a far off place in the sun

Give them each a name 

     and shoot them one by one

Now I’m standing in the kitchen

It is time to go

     and deep down I know

I will never see her again

I kiss her lips and squeeze her hand

     and fight the water in my eyes

So much time, so much distance, 

     so many worlds between us

How quickly we run out of time and things to say 

     and no parting words redeem us

But I am not leaving empty handed

I’ve smuggled something precious in my carry-on

Something that I have received all through my years, 

     though I live so far away

     and never even asked for it

So now at home, when it gets dark,

     and hard, 

     and I’m all tied up 

          and tangled in my scars

I look to her faithful, humble prayers 

     collected like fireflies 

          in these three blue jars.