Dining Room Door

What if all the space you rent
around you was your idea
of those about you? Would you go through
the dining room door to the humid successes
(though probably not just that but that all the same)
each seemingly oblivious to the faithful
window handles, the sky’s crossbeams
that might extend the future in a fashion,
the breakfront’s drawer, the dutifully arranged

that times a river maker. You begin to fill in
on one side supple sand, hanging
rock and shell and bone ground down
beneath the breathing tides.
On the other side, a long, skinny-legged bird
wader in the river made a hunter, a painting
eyeing the grooves of the table, wicker mats,
the beautiful, loving, interrupting
from the gamboling family graveyard.

Douglas Larsen

Douglas Larsen lives with the poet Amanda Yskamp and their two children along the Russian River in Northern California.