Renovations

Photo: Taken from my bivouac sac at approx. 5:30 a.m. early August 1999. Summit of Mt. Edith Cavell after climbing the N.Face with Guillermo Barron.  (Rollei 35TE, Fuji Sensia 100).  "My best year? Certainly. It was when I did things - was a person, really - of an 'uncommonly high order'"....

Renovations

I love this house.

Yet like my life, it is constantly

running down.

Cracks and leaks appear, and I excite

 – and anger –

at the thought of repairs

Of creation and new opportunity.

While I long for my life back.

They are all vain attempts at the

reversal of time, renovations to fool 

me, this house, into a youth it no

longer possesses.

I steal back the years

I’ve lost

by digging through the mounds of

clay. The patching of walls. Moving

new structures or others into the empty spaces

left behind.

The garden grows; I grow older.  Too 

late now comes guilt. I see the 

sacrifice of the sacred places in this

house, how I’ve denied them the

dignity of a decline. Constantly

patching the widening cracks in my

foundation, I want my life back.

(c) 2011 J. Popowich