The House of Truth Telling

A woman who lives in a house built on sand

tells time with a clock

though time doesn’t matter

because she isn’t at now;

she’s paying bills next Saturday

and buying sleeping pills at the drugstore

on her way home from work.

She thrives on the swarming bees of her appetites

because they’re the only thing that makes her feel alive.

 

I want to live in a house built on rock

where poems and prayers echo down the halls

and the undulations of my private rhythms

tell time in consultation with the sun.

I am neither nice nor mean here –

in this house generosity is measured

by how much truth you tell.

The rooms hold all you have to give;

the smoke of it wafts out the chimney

and blossoms into shapes as if the house itself

were blowing smoke rings into the fine cold sky

for everyone to see.

In the desk drawer of this house

the account book tallies silence,

its value when the heart yearns for it

and its cost when one with truth to tell

is hushed or drowned out.

In this house I am a servant with no master

and a queen with no subjects.

This house will weather storm and flood,

and an earthquake will rock it

like a babe in her mother’s arms.