Gerald Dillenbeck | + Follow Poet |
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House Shopping

I am house shopping
with the required Buyer's Agent,
also a fairly tolerant friend of mine.

She likes to drive
although not gifted with any sense of direction,
until we hurriedly arrive,
then she beelines into the ubiquitously requisite lock box
as if by smell.

Meanwhile
I visit current occupants,
the trees first and foremost,
then bushes
flowers,
occasionally, to my grateful surprise,
an entire garden,
or even just one vegetable,
a tomato plant,
a humble gang of shaded herbs.

I ask them how it is here
in their home.
I like to taste their soil
for signs of pregnancy
but who knows what contaminants
might fester here.
And my real estate agent,
although a friend,
finds it unseemly
for me to put my mouth around
what I probably won't buy.

She, too soon,
coaxes me away from my greet and meets
with shade-givers
and grasses,
the edible and ornamental neighbors
of the "big house,"
to explore the darkness of plumbing
and electrical systems,
attics and basements,
kitchens and bathrooms...

Her list of boring things to look at
and too often smell
in a bad way
feels endless
in comparison to too brief introductions
outside,
speaking with,
listening for,
hoping and faithing and loving with
any signs of life
among these large majority of property historians,
co-investors,
cooperative care-givers and receivers.

Eventually,
it becomes our time to aimlessly wander around
in search of yet another lock box
on our life For Sale list.

I say goodbye to the trees
and shrubs,
my occasional edible
and more popular ornamental hosts,
far too soon
to ever learn
if they would choose me
or not
to become with them.

I feel like I do
on election nights
when winners and losers are announced
by statistical projection
before votes are actually counted
from all us co-investors;
and long before registered voters
have listened to trees
still standing in our yards,
on our farms,
in our fertile forests,
to learn their quieter discernment
of which candidates produce more healthy cooperative outcomes
and which more toxic competitions
within these diversities
of Earth's wealthy nature.

Copyright © Gerald Dillenbeck | Year Posted 2017

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