Our Mansion

Falling to pieces house
sodden under here    sponge soft there
wormed through    beetles
are rooting about

cracked green leaf glass pane
dark lead edges
clear panes with thin thread broken corners

A soft arch with
the terracotta shifting

A picture slipping

Walls with dirty thumb prints
they're pictures too  
trace fields

Old French windows shadowed with
berberis breathing thorned
pressing on to near    inside like a person
wantoning wanting    to finger musty gathered
parings letter scraps    flaked befores

Not quite there though
dirty yellow flowered
ragged agéd

thinned sap shrub
not a person yet

What is there there?

There's only our lacework (delicate
and ignorant) of unnecessary turns
to look
down on
for so long