20150819 Avocation)

Loki less than a year old and I standing in front of the house which at that time
had many obscuring bushes in July 2006. I'm about thirty pounds lighter today
if you count the dog otherwise not all that much different except wiserI hope.

Does it make me a materialist

To confess I’m a devotee of old houses

That I chose to live in one fix things

Myself because contracting it out

Would be impossibly expensive

I’m not going to discuss how I got here

That is a whole nother bag o beans

Like they say just know I was not put off

By the prospect of numerous tasks

Of upgrading our word to avoid

Modernizing vich is verboten in

Restoration circles today unless

You’re talking mid-fifties modern

Then you’re right on the money

A website I follow daily or whenever

They post is Old House Dreams . . .

For those that love old houses

I really must get that corrected 

To who love old houses it can wait 

There is something so much

More substantial about an old place

Which I think starts with the 

Incredible hardwood lumber 

So much more plentiful cheaper than today 

That opinion is direct from my keister 

I haven’t done a scholar’s comparison

When two-by-fours measured a real

Two inches by four inches were

Set dead center on sixteen not twenty-four inches

These houses were horribly leaky 

Heated even worse firewood must 

Have been quite easily fetched

Of course their owners dressed

In layers of heavy Victorian fabrics

Sat close by the fireside embroidering

Reading the news a leather bound book

With kids on their laps to peruse

Illustrations then scoot off to bed

Under down featherthicks when

Mom or dad blew out the candles

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking

Of previous occupants many do

Scouring the county archive across the street

Uncovering names prices family changes

Dates additions were made was he a

Doctor maybe that’s why the office has

Those strange marks on the floor

My discoveries range around who did

All this fudgified wiring 

How I struggle to find the valve

That shuts off the pipe feeds 

To all the gas lighting there must be one here

I think the owner before me had cellulose

Blown in the walls as insulation perhaps

The best method for the time

It’s got lots of gaps I find more every day

In winter sometimes it’s like standing outside

Even with my costly more efficient new boiler

This is what I do as relief from writing

Weltschmerz and depression

It’s harmless I hope though I 

Often wonder if my brain has gone 

Numb from being too close to 

Too much lead paint removal

It may be just aging but you’ll never know

Until the autopsy

c. J.S.Manista, 2015