She who sleeps here and would live here
full-time, if you weren’t all fake-fire

and full-bore fear, is at the beach
instead, savoring the fresh catch,

laughing it up, sipping a cocktail
with best friends, watching the teal

sky morph to tangerine.
The distance is obscene,

as is the upspringing rosemary
she has planted on the weary,

chipped back porch.  You’ve done nothing
to nourish it.  There’s something

of her too in the venerable jade,
the feathery fern in half shade,

half sun, outgrowing neglect.
The whole tendentious house, in fact—

grinning painted-over soot, girly
swirling flowered paper, purely

her and her maternal thing.
You’d rather read.  She’d rather sing,

convert the porch to a veranda,
find other bright ways to pander

to would-be buyer-uppers, doubtless
dream of birth, children, faultless

to a fault—she, outgrowing you
and the fault you’ve fallen into.