The Upstairs Room

It must have been in March the rug wore through.

Now the day passes and I

At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,

At the twisted grain.

Exposed, where emptiness allows,

Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations'

Stumble and scrape and

To the floor my father stained,

The new blood streaming from his head.

The

Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that

Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endure.

In March the rug was ragged as the past.

The threadrots like the lives we fasten on.

Now it is August,

And the floor is blank, worn smooth,

And, for my life, imperishable.