A House Unbridled

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

Sunday in the fold of
morning my wife still

on the edge of sleep I rise to
wander from room to room in

the glorious luxury of being
alive to the stillness of the

day when the coffee boils,
and the dog is content,

and our son, our making,
warm and happy goes off

with a friend.  Then
it is just us and our own

remembering in the embrace of
those who have lived together,

house to house and who have built
from its members one by one

the long and lovely moment of lover's
sweet and grieving release.  Later,

the paper, the bed unmade with
our living, I think of my uncle's bed

empty, the house unsold,
intact, dusted now and

then by a sister who stoops
lifts to another life, that which is lost

in this.  He is gone and no matter
what, the ground remains heaped

with the earth that turns
in its own house, the clock

on the wall, the downward swing
the voice that quivers and

falls silent as my wife,
who rises from the bed to stand in

the doorway of the present
certain as future, delicate as prayer.