Gutted

 

Walking through the house

Was strange: your

House that burned, now

Skeletal and

Perpendicular

 

Beams and cross-beams,

Bannister askew—rooms

Awash

 

In neutral shades of earth

And ash,

 

An appliance here or there;

 

For all the blackened parts

And where textures are

Impressed with soot and

Shadowed particles,

 

The house we see

Could be

 

Rising from the ground

As new:

 

Save for a generation’s

Life, now endowed only

By memory as legacy,

 

Which I think you saw

Upon the bones of

Your remembered home,

 

As we all walked through