I worked all summer long to make a house a home.
I knew what I needed, I wrote a list.
A place for people, safe and warm
and all the repairs that I shouldn’t have missed.
One hundred years and maybe twenty-five more.
They boasted of the new roof, wiring, and siding.
but the furnace can be dated fifty years or more
I should’ve known there’d be things worth hiding.
What is that smell of smoke and soil,
the caretaker that lived here did not know to keep house.
and a summer month of heat took two hundred in oil.
So many holes and crevices I’m sure I saw a mouse.
Most every door is ajar with a buckle or swell
Now no wonder they kept everyone wide open as a yawn.
and a crack in near every window that I could tell
Now no wonder why the blinds and curtains were drawn.
The electrician wants to rewire more than one
outlet per room and raise them up off the floors
but being safe as they are I’ll make due
and shave a little off the bottoms of the doors
and I’ll cut some old glass to make the windows like new.
Next, the water can’t run pressure upstairs
The well and pump was said to be new,
but the plumbers say all the pipes need repairs.
The day I moved in the drunk caretaker slurred moving out
“Close down the upstairs when winter falls
the downs only fit to stay warm.” We looked, no doubt,
Not a stitch of warmth inside the second-floor walls
and not a blanket to keep the attic from cold
I spent what I had to fix, If I had the money I had before
I could fix the wear and all I wasn’t told
but since now I have no more I’ll make due what I can’t afford.
and the roof is sagging, the part that’s not new
and who would put plastic siding on a barn
‘cause now that it’s mine, off it blew.
Two summers later and I’ll sell the farm.
Chickens and ducks, a goose and two hares
With all the work done, so close to a dream,
but not here long enough for the neighbors to care
maybe somewhere else the grass will be green.