These Walls

These walls are mine
so long as I pay rent on time.
Every inch of them
covered
with things that came from nowhere
everywhere
caught in my gravity
like dust in a comet's tail
falling off
flung up and out by my passing tornado,
I throw drinking straws through concrete walls.

Wherever I go, there I am
Lurking in wait like a meddling teenage detective
intent on keeping me from getting away with it.
And everywhere I look
there you're not.
Your laughter doesn't echo off
these walls
anymore.

These walls are empty
no matter what I hang on them;
Canadian snowshoes,
Chinese rice-drying trays,
Tibetan batik with a big, blue dragon in the middle.
Wood, leather, wicker, cotton, color
from someplace I've never been,
where I'd be as wildly
out of place
as they are here
on the Indian River.

Only this picture of Hemingway
really has a function
belongs
screams
WORK!!!
loud enough to make my belly tingle.
Papa leaning hard on his left arm,
grey-bearded, hairy-armed,
belly hanging under the table.
He hasn't got time to stop writing and
SMILE
for the camera.

When a guest asks
I will tell her,
"Yes,
I hung those there.
And there were dishes
in that sink
before you got here,
but I washed them.

"I also picked out,
paid for,
and hung the curtains;
lace and gold,
and that jury-rigged valance
I split with a steak-knife
covering the top
of my Eastern facing
picture window.

"Please note,"
I will add
in the soberest of tones,
conspiratorially,
"the complete lack
of fruit flies
or rotting garbage odor."

My guest will smile,
nod her head,
and her eyes will dart to the exit,
fingers twitching in her lap.

But I will remain,
proud
of what I have wrought
from nothing
within these walls.