Painting by Bev Jackson
Hippies Use Side Door
A place where two people have been happy,
are happy. Home and garden exhale
peace and spice. Snap peas and peppermint.
Asparagus tongues rise in the vegetable beds.
Rhododendron flowers reveal delicate striations
beneath lifted upper lips. A wooden whale,
dark blue with white patches, pieced together
by the joyous man who lives here,
arches against a shingled wall.The house-sitter dreams, the first night,
of her husband, who let himself dissolve
in a smoke-filled river of wine and weed. What
he might have been if he'd saved himself.
If she'd managed to save him.HIPPIES USE SIDE DOOR
says a sign by the dark red toolshed.
The house-sitter sits in a chair
beside a stone Buddha head
near a cherry tree whose unripe fruit
the chickadees and wrens adore.
She gazes downslope at grass, azaleas,
vegetables. Her job for the next twelve days
is to eat from the plenitude, water
as needed, encourage more to grow
so the couple will return to collards
and walking onions, mustard, garlic
and carrots, arugula, strawberries.How her husband loved good food,
gathering and cooking it,
perfecting recipes. That time
they gorged on wild blackberries,
vines stretching on forever by the Rogue River.
Their mouths purple. The sweetness
of blackberry kisses. How he loved her
but loved alcohol more.This house is full of light
but the room where the house-sitter sleeps
is dark. Each night when she turns off her lamp
she peeks beneath the blind into a neighbor's window,
sees disembodied white-socked feet.
The old widow next door watches TV late.Normally abstemious, the house-sitter
is drinking too much wine. Her dreams
grow disembodied, turbulent.They found him on the floor,
one arm extended toward a full glass
out of reach.In the strip of earth between
the sidewalk and the street
opium poppies lift huge red faces
toward the sun.
Half-hidden in the garden
an iron mermaid clasps her hands
behind her head, leans back, smiles.
