High summer. We sat poolside at your old friend’s
multi-million dollar house overlooking a smoggy city.
Inside his AC-chilly walls, I searched for words
to praise the decor, couches so plump
with designer pillows, I couldn’t sit down; exotic rugs
I was afraid to walk on. Mi casa es su casa,
your friend declared, but it wasn’t true.
Now we’ve come back home. Heaven
is the comfortable squalor of this bungalow
under cottonwoods shedding brittle leaves; heaps
of unfiled poems, our own breath
filling our own space.
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