This Old House. . . .
I am like this old house. I have windows that are broken or have shifted in the space designed for them. I have appendages that were once new rooms added on to make space for new dreams or for widening the premises for old forms expanding.
There were so many things added to make space, to make room for adding new thoughts. I felt so full.
Like a banquet dinner, overeating because the taste of the new sent me reeling into ecstasy with renewed energy, exuberance to make new what now was seemingly out of date.
Excited, couldn’t wait for the construction to begin. This is what motivated me to move the furniture to new places in the original rooms. And I did for what seemed like centuries, moved three cushion couches up and down flights of stairs.
Moved furniture around curved staircases and did not sweat and with magic collapsed a wayward desk stuck hard within the frame of a doorjamb to regain its form on the other side of the door.
When the furniture had tried all the corners, all the different positions, we went with the room additions to accommodate the children’s dreams. Eventually the children grew up and left and the funds ran out and now began the simplifying.
Do we need? Whatever we held in our hands the answer was no. We did not need. Just headroom to organize the memories of a lifetime so they wouldn’t decay amid the premises that began to fall apart.
The landscaping was the first to go because there was no energy to care for the feeding and pruning of what went unrestrained. There was no greening of the lawns.
The funds were pared to essentials. The wall paper peeled and the paint faded and then the bare boards loomed in their nakedness. The house once held dreams and saw centuries pass. My dreams inexhaustible, need new frames.
The teachers say that we stay until we use up all the changes, all the additions and all the new houses. Then come the new worlds. And worlds they are because one world cannot contain all the ideas needing to be born.
There are places waiting for the itinerant and exuberant teacher who has in her carpetbag tiles from the Pewabic Natives whose art formed the skyline, solar trees to grow on mountainsides to furnish heat in frigid places and books with magic words that show the love grown in unknown regions. I understand the school stands ready.
Consider This. . .
What makes you think we do not use
a worker who thinks and injects
new thought in old ways?
What makes you think we would
let loose the likes of you in a world
for frolic, for nothing more than waste?
We look for farmers for the vineyards,
for the fields needing seeds for food. . .
for thought, for starving minds as well as bodies.
Where we put you is in a place of value,
of your talents, of your loves, of your sweet thoughts
feeding the children of all ages. . .
How else to sweep clean the Father’s House?
the teachers
photo by Tresy Hallissey