I love a house that has a wall
around it and a gate through which
a traveler might enter.

I would enter and rest there among
the backyard trees along a stream
that flows through ochre grasses
and crimson amaryllises.

There would be music and good food
and the owner would be well read
her bookcases filled with the greatest
books of our times and we would spend
hours speaking of books and poets.

And I would wish to stay but the journey
calls and in the way that it is, this place
would become a lovely memory
“of things exactly as they are.”