Little doors are opening
in my past houses
all over America—
Jersey, the Bronx, a rambling
rental in Ohio, a brick
bungalow west of Chicago.

Other people live in them now,
walk from room to room
on creaking floorboards in the night,
drink beer from a rattling refrigerator,
run water in the same tub, click bolts
on the same doors against burglars,
listen for scuttling in the walls
under the same tattered moon.

Little windows of memory
are opening inside my body.
The light is a glancing blow.
Life has suddenly become
a page from a college yearbook
or a walk in a forest
full of extinct animals.

This will be my last house.
I love its modesty, its economy,
the cleanliness and loneliness of privacy,
rooms full of books and scraps of sunlight,
the flowers in the yard. A piano
hunches in the corner, ready to sing.

This house will outlive me. Then
a realtor with money-colored eyes
will raze it for a mansion of fake brick.
I prefer to think a young couple
will have a baby here, put in a swing set.
Or someone with Parkinson's will find in it
a house with no stairs.