Clark Holtzman

About the House All Day

Houses have their habits & ways of talking,
to us, to one another, to their distant cousin, the woods
and to the world, however they know it.
They make room for us, try to, or leave us out of doors—
try that, too—stand empty sometimes, their windows
blanked, sometimes for long times.

Such are their habits when one inhabits them
that houses after awhile become about us
and we about them, about the house all day
like gods and their people, all day,
and such that when we disinhabit, they’re silent,
have nothing to say about us all day.

House Holding

Houses are not real,
they are dreams, our own,
they are dream homes
and we call them so.

When a house burns,
the next morning
we stumble through the ashes
and are reminded of it, our dream.

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