Tinder Remains (standard:poetry, 305 words)
Author: Spiel	Added: Nov 30 2006	Views/Reads: 2719/0	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Home is where we are.

Tinder Remains 

Chopin's Waltz in A flat major is on. 

It could just as easily be 

Johnny Mathis singing Chances Are. 

It's not about who is on. 

It's about the sky. 

The flames from the million-dollar adobe 

high on the ridge across the way 

have now ceased to rage. 

Robust billows of suffocating smoke blacken the sky. 

A fuzzy seedball of red-orange 

hangs weightless where the moon should glow. 

Wait... Claire de lune just came on. 

Isn't it about the moon? 

Maybe I'm needing to make things up — 

wishing I did not have to think 

about how quickly home can be reduced to naught. 

Tinder and smoke. 

Smoke from one's home enough to frizz the moon. 

It will linger til tomorrow and frizz the great sun. 

We don't belong in a fancy-pants neighborhood like this — 

mostly doctors, lawyers, successful car dealers 

(and, we figure, a few Mafia guys). 

While the adobe ruins smoke, its owners frolic in London. 

They are always somewhere else. 

We don't know any of the neighbors here. 

Seems Fate just plucked us up 

and dropped us in this beautiful place — 

(certainly modest by neighboring standards). 

At the time, a freak blip on the real estate market 

that someone needed to get rid of quick. 

We've always said we could live in an outhouse 

as long as we had a good view of the sky. 

And us. 

And what constitutes our home is us. 

Today one might say there is no sky. 

I fear I would have no home 

if there were no us. 

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata just came on. 

Our dog is scratching at the door. 

She is covered with dry grass, leaves, and excrement. 

I don't know where I've left her brush. 

(c) 2003  Spiel 

Tinder Remains appears in "Human," a chapbook by Spiel, published by
Pudding House Publications, 2003 


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