The man who built it told her:
“We’ll stain it walnut like the fireplace
we made love to in Nantucket
the year we found this shell”
Her lasting memories were of cigar smoke,
Scotch and the cancer in his throat
The new owners painted it green,
“to match the sofa
We’ll call it the ‘Green Room’
and read here in the evenings”
The green colored every other color,
what they dreamed, what they said,
and they quarreled every night in the Green Room
until all color between them fought for light
The last couple splashed it with hasty coats
of a pale white then in vogue
barely hiding the old green mess
but allowed the drapery to flow
Guests in silk dresses and imported heels
deposited coffee rings, cigarette burns
and a long deep scratch on the mantle’s top
“I want a new house,” she insisted,
and they moved from house to house
leaving closets stuffed with boredom
Now newlyweds scrape and sand
through stain, oil paint and char
as close as they can get to bare oak
where grain edges into seashore,
where they laugh at a young man’s grumbling
at his loss of days off and erotic afternoons
at the hands of foolish men
too busy or too drunk to undress their wives
on an heirloom rug in front of a real fire