The Nursery
We bashed in walls when we moved here, tore
up floors, destroyed remnants of past owners to
make it our own. The remaining saltillo tiles pave
a walkway through living space and kitchen to
back rooms polished with white paint soon to be
marked by short sticky fingers. A room of her own,
a corner, a niche, a chapter, absent of usual crib,
there are shelves for her clothes and portraits to
encourage tradition. The shade, seafoam like
a crayon but bright with white like lichen or
wet stones on a northern seashore. Already,
a soft pink chair for nursing quietly in the corner
where I can bathe her in sunbeams. With windows
ajar, the sounds of our river tumbling west through
the canyon hurriedly to town, errands to run perhaps,
and, at night, the coyotes whooping like a party of
drunken teenagers on the mesa top above us. This
home is for her more than ourselves. We could
live in shacks without water, in dirt piles along
highways but for baby we have rooms and room
to grow and green roofs and lucky blue doors.
