Kathleen McClung, author of The Typists Play Monopoly and Almost the Rowboat, is winner of the Rita Dove, Morton Marr, and Shirley McClure poetry prizes. She serves as sonnet judge and associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition and teaches at Skyline College and The Writing Salon in San Francisco. www.kathleenmcclung.com    

Playhouse                                                                  

I.                     Silence                                                                             

I have no daughters

And my words refuse me

Like sullen girls in bedrooms

Too old to play

Not ready to apprentice

They prefer brooding,

d.j.’s, Vogue magazine

I will place plates of food

Beside the door

Delicious, piping hot

I will wait them out

II.                  Dream

A woman in a dream

Fixes up my old playhouse

Clears away cobwebs,

Small chairs, cradles

Adult comforts instead

Lamps, books, rugs

I know this woman

She taught her daughters to weave,

Attend to color, balance, craft

She studies systems of caregiving,

Centers of convalescence

And travels to my dream

To do home improvements

An interior designer                                         (continues)                                                    

III.               Return

I find a new entrance

A gate frozen for years

Behind blackberry bushes

An antique way in

To the playhouse

As the evening’s voice deepens

And the light grows mute

I pull open a door

I have not touched in twenty years

Inside

No bookcase

No doll carriage

But birds

Yellow tufted heads

Circles of rouge

On their faces

Water bowls filled

A thick spray of seeds

And songs

Crisscrossing

Weaving, unraveling in air

Originally published in Walrus 1995 Literary Review (Mills College)