Common Property

STEPHEN YENSER

COMMON PROPERTY

To hell with it. Six weeks

On one brief sequence,

And it about events that changed us so,

And I'm still cold and hard to start

Each day as my béte noire, the Deux Chevaux

Meant to play a leading part.

I'm stuck at home again. A fuggy flat.

And when I open what would be the windows

Details zing back and forth and in and out

As though I were that other house

I couldn't write in, meant to write about,

And they the bees that built in it.

But first there were the swallows-

Although I didn't know till late

That Gallic winter our fair weather friends

Were what had fouled the flue, reduced the heat.

One morning, shoveling out the clinker,

I found what seemed the mate

Of our half-molten weathercock,

The "chimney piece" we'd picked up on a walk

With John up to the ruin on the rise,

Gone up in smoke years back.

Now one would think real birds too wise

To be bound down to such a spot,

That instinct would have taught

That smothered fires could do them in...

Yet even birds of a feather,

It seemed to us when we had thought,

Must know more than to stick together

Through such a literal thick and thin.

And sure enough: the chimney's sconce

Only held a blackened nest. You glossed:

"One swallow didn't make the winter."

We did, somehow, and so the bees would suffer

When they returned that spring to their old haunts,

Stick upon acrid stick of burning sulphur.

Every evening workers would succumb

And tumble inside laden with their honey

Which then was dutifully preserved

By desperate survivors. It's funny-

They wished to leave the awful nest they'd stirred,

Yet somehow couldn't. A timid queen,

Or hatching plans, or something kept them there.

One day, up on the roof, they swarmed

At last, a tiny, manic storm,

And then, as the real thing came up,

Beside themselves with indecision,

Inched back over the chimney's lip.

All afternoon we lived in that dark din

Of rain and sweet frustration.

For once you couldn't hike off with our friend.

Next morning, buzzing around the house,

They looked as though they meant

To wrap the whole thing up.

Your turn came first. The day I drove

Home through the hairpin curves,

Having helped you move

Closer to nature and to better lovers

Of it than I, glanced into the mirror

In time to see flames leaping through the louvers.

Of course there was that stream,

A farmer with a bucket. Smoke and steam.

A cut, some stitches. A final row.

According to the settlement,

The scorched but salvaged body's yours.

It's just as well. It cannot move me now.