Fitted together to predict a calm future,
The one that, for all their demurrals,
The grown ones had reached and told of
In these stories at night.
The talk lived in the panel of wall
Between my bedroom and the living room,
The chalky membrane of plaster
Deaf to the higher insinuations
And passing along chronicles and apologues
Of lower voices; full of lacunae,
Fragments in a burning hand written
On less than water - air-
Across the oval blank of my vision
And funneling down the ear.
No trees outside except the distant eucalyptus.
Only the surfs voice at night.
Trees need wind, but on the stillest night
The waves spoke like leaves.
And, like a spasm of phosphor,
Through the wall an adult confided
And another caught the glimmer,
Gave it heart and luster simply
By a laugh or beckoning denial or sighing
Affirmation. Outside the house
On its hill of clay and sand and dry grass,
No trees. The waves were the leaves.
We lived in a lath and plaster house,
Mud and sticks, on a sandhill above the Pacific,
Two slabs of concrete and a wood floor,
A tri-Ievel,
My bedroom on the lowest.
I knew where the termite built its palaces,
The king snake and the snail
Sheltered under ice plant and ivy,
The velvet ant took the sun
