OPEN HOUSE

People still live here, we are informed,
though you would never know by looking.
There are no shoes in the hallway,
no blankets strewn on the arm of the sofa,
no dishes in the sink, which overflows
at the moment only with sunlight.
The remnants of their daily routines
have been moved elsewhere, so that we
may wander through, speaking calmly
of amenities, the neighborhood’s charm,
the current state of property taxes,
our voices echoing from room to room,
as if from present to past and back again.
We must imagine, it seems, our own
dishes piled up; the damp, wrinkled laundry
in wicker baskets, old books stacked
randomly upon slowly-warping shelves;
must imagine the rain-streaked window glass
smudged with dog noses and fingerprints.
But none of us want to imagine these.
We much prefer the gleaming surfaces
of things, closets without clothing,
the large bowl of lemons left out like
an offering to a god none of us can imagine.
We are not quite serious about this life,
real or imagined. We are, like everyone
here today, merely passing through.

Greg Watson is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently All the World at Once: New and Selected Poems. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood, published by Nodin Press.