Still Enough Strangeness

"Pissing out the door of a cottage
in an after-squall wind before dawn
in the tame hill country of Wales,
farms everywhere, fences and hedgerows,
but still enough strangeness, precipitous
pastures, patches of wood shadowing
tangles of one-car-wide lanes,
to take you out of yourself for a time...
– CK Williams, from "Naked"




Far too many hours counted within
the house, the stagnant and ironic
air as the light outside all day long
has looked glamorously approachable,
as it had tangled itself up along
the beach tree roots at the terrace,
you turn on your thickest coat, scarf
and walk down the now tar dark street

where suddenly the shock to mind
comes, as porches flicker by motion
lights and the fuzzy green limbs
of Christmas trees poke out of corridors
well-wishing as they do by childhood
ornaments and the likely stars,
red as printed paint, at the very tip
of the thirsty frazier firs,

when it dawns on you, your feet
cooling now, face hardening, nose
red, that each house is world,
like you, that when you were ten,
you walked into strange living rooms
of friends, if even temporary,
and could see mother fold damp
clothes smoking a filterless cigarette.