house

The first address is of the house we rented twenty years ago, when our kids were young. Ten minutes on foot—half a mile—from the place where we now live. In reality, however, there is no address, not any longer.

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The stillness you prize.
Won’t prize you back. Two beefsteaks.
Ripening on a windowsill. A purple tray.
Piled with coal. From the field.
Of solemn brothers calling.
Your name in unison you learn.
Men are irrelevant but.
Persistent symmetries are not.

I dream us young, again,
mother and daughter back
on 69th Street inside
our old brownstone—across
from the church, patch of lawn— 

a house neglected, wrecked,
as if the family
had been forced at gunpoint
to move away. In corners
dirt stacked like miniscule