The Eviction
I gave the knob a good loud rattle
to tell whatever critters
were in there, please, to run and hide.
With that, I threw the front door wide.
We heard no skitters.
But, wow, what guilt: the family chattel
wore the dust
Neglect deposits, as it must,
on all that goes neglected.
Interconnected,
innocence-entangling
vertigos of webwork ran
from escritoire to ottoman.
Caught moths were dangling,
mummified, like ornaments.
Agony to have to reclaim
by rag and broom
the fancy living room
I had consigned to decadence
for decades. All the same,
the time had come to teach the spiders
this wasn’t their inheritance
to build on as they pleased.
We were the new insiders,
and we had come to stay.
You laughed. I sneezed—
a sign, perhaps, that we should start
ripping the intricate
disgrace apart
and whisking it
in tatters out of doors.
Respectful in a way,
we labored silently to sate,
if it was not too late,
the nagging of my ancestors.
Links:
[1] https://www.ablemuse.com/digital-books-23/v23/digital edition/Complete Digital Version of -/Able Muse, Print Edition (Number 23), Summer 2017