1.
I have to cleanse my stables.
Too many hoof prints
in the dust, footprints,
too many names
scrawled on the stalls,
too many names in the index.

2.
One sunrise should do it,
because the sun is always
she is good for forgetting.
One sunrise, one prayer,
one newly-painted white wall,
a wet kiss offered freely
to the passing wind
and then it’s done.

3.
Then the bare building
will be mine again—
‘mine’ means free of my own
history, free of my wants,
wins, failures, ‘mine’ means
just me, alone with what will come.

4.
But the old smells
still linger, stirred up
from the floorboards,
dirt of the yard, by the very
wind I hoped would heal.
And heal it does, but fragrance
takes a long time to go away.

5.
Stallions and mares,
those who galloped,
those who slouched along
dragging a cart full of manure,
Carry me to glory!
I shouted as I rode,
but they who could drag
boulders out of earth
could not drag me out of me.

6.
So the stable stand empty now
and people ask me what
that building is, is it a house,
who lives in it, is it for sale?
Everybody wants to get
out of the city. But not this house
if house it is. This house
is sacred to its absences.