The House

The house in my dreams is familiar yet new;

I’ve lived here before, but forgotten some rooms.

There’s always a door that I open to find

some additional floor space.  I pull up a blind

on a garden that reaches way back to a wall

with another door opening into the hall.

I go around softly, discovering rooms:

a study, a workshop with rows of old tools,

a greenhouse, o’er run with a trellis and vines

a bathroom with deeply-welled tubs that are lined

with mossy green marks where the bathers have lain,

and I go around softly, again and again.

It’s a house of surprises, a place without time,

a house full of memories, not all of them mine,

and yet I belong here.  I am the house wife

in this house where I’ve wandered

my whole sleeping life.  
              --Agatha