Jasmine
You’ve never had much feeling for
this house
the little A-frame,
its white siding its black shutters
which neither of us
thought much of changing
adding personal touches
to increase our affection
where our boys grew up
so when they are old
it’s what they’ll remember,
all they’ll remember,
the ill-fitting never-locking side
door
the spring mice’s black eyes
against the wall behind the
bookshelf
the backyard border
of yews and privets and wild roses
with snarled branches and roots
Before this house
we took a trip to Spain
the August before our eldest was
born
and had dinner and drank Rioja wine
late at night outdoors under a gauze
roof
as girls in floral dresses swung by
and azaleas hung in pots
beside bags of water the waiter said
kept the flies away
and instead of a fence
the restaurant was marked
by a cast-iron black trellis
spun with white-button flowers
so lush in smell it was more like
sex
the near-rankness of sex,
moist inside your nose
and languorous inside your mouth
your eyes smiling drunkenly from it
and it could only last forever
and be the place where you belong
even now
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