In Clara's House

In Clara’s House

In your house

Christmas was always kept

my grandfather getting the tree

from the VA lot, cheap and scrawny,

you and I making it fit to be seen

before the sisters and the cousins came

to eat.

In your house

a discard was an ornament

something broken could be fixed

and used again.

something ugly could be cleaned

and put in a place of pride

unique.

In your house

African violets ruled in fertile hosts,

as big as geraniums, green guards with mauve caps

or cobalt, protecting every table, every window,

grown from microleaves I watched you cut and

place on soil like rows of crops from the farm 

you couldn’t have.

In your house

you set the table

carved and heavy, massive made,

covered with lace where all the family came for

groaning meals, and on off days

a child could hide between the legs

and be a lion.

In your house

a child with one mother lost

could have many found, in tales and talk

smelling like coffee and cardamon,

and soap, mother hands brushing princess hair,

braiding it into dragontails.

In your house,

Christmas was always kept.

The tree star watched while we were singing

and the casual blows and formal fear

the hidden anger and secret prisons

of that other house,

were nothing for awhile.

December 2010

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry 

Photo of Clara Mathilda Carlson taken by Robert Studio, Chicago, Ill, 194?