A mind built with many rooms is made
to keep searching for houses to arrange them in,
wonder how those rooms will seduce a guest
to enter, sit, sleep or amble about,
and who’s to say a mind cannot covet
as many houses as it must have
for all the chandeliers, tapestries
and object d’ars it can hoard?
Otherwise, as for a mind
that craves something more,
rooms in a single house
would lay out as furniture stores,
art galleries or thrift shops,
and who lives in crowded closets
except spiders?
A Queen Ann chair doesn’t sit comfortably
next to a Japanese settee or Bavarian bench,
nor do Persian carpets like to roll out
onto the glistening white tile of a villa
reaching to infinity pools
A castle wants turrets,
great halls, massive fireplaces;
nostalgia, a hearth, nooks,
sagging old sofas, antique mirrors
with jolly ghosts
The mind built with many rooms
keeps searching for landscapes where
people can live out their stories,
where daydreams call for palm trees,
natural grasses and boulders,
rambling gardens and fountains
for Victorians in the country
Who’s to say
there can be only one house;
why not five or seven or twelve,
and hedges blooming around cottages,
or ranch styles, geodesics, yurts,
a last house, a farm house
with circular porches, stables,
waterfalls, ponds?
Old men need recliners for cogitating
in a room softened by a fire;
women boudoirs to haunt,
walk-ins for wardrobes
Some rooms ask for leaded glass,
some glitz, masterpieces dominating walls;
others call for footstools, alcoves
with elaborate lamps on precious tables
There must be views from cliffs some days,
the glitter of the sea in a year or two,
footbridges leading into forests,
balconies for cityscapes,
decks overlooking mountain ranges
One night’s a night to sleep
wrapped only in a blanket on manicured grass
under an elaborate arboretum
below stars with no solution;
another’s a gilded bedroom
shuttered against the dark,
its louvers bright enough at dawn
to send sun streaks across a demilune,
and with them a curious set of sudden plans
for a cabin away from everything
where the eye can be dazzled
by a spirited blue gill spinning skyward
from the silver surface of a morning lake