The Doll House (there is a later revision of this poem later on in the blog)

They seem to be for little girls
with scaled-down dreams
of future lives behind
the scaled-down images,
perhaps of incarnations
silently remembered.

There we walked together
down Peace Lane,
skipping back a century
and pausing at a picket fence,
'So this was home,or might have been.'
...a karma touchable
and still untouched
by interrupted time...its colors fresh,
the giveaway too lovely,
too inclined to the postiche,
and yet for little girls,
a step into dimensions
that I only thought I knew.

I knew of course, that she would lead me
to another view, though I would leave
reluctantly, the movie-set facade
entrenched in homemade dreams
for it spoke more of me
than comfort might allow.
For me, no bathos smeared my vision,
rather ghosts of my old friends
were lurking just beyond those walls
and I was one to see
a habitat (though strange to me)
was theirs, perhaps,
a life creating them,
a life, a book, in which the pages called
...one that I hadn't known.
'Wait......just a little more.'

And then the open side
with little rooms cut out.
Little beds and chairs
are moved about...
and tiny people stay away
as if the president
would come to call, and they
are suddenly unworthy.

There they might sleep
or sip at tea
with giants watching,
if they dared, but no,
the house is empty,
much too quiet,
too pristine,
and even presidents
would presidentially demur.

Now she takes my hand,
"Do you like it?"
"Oh, it is grand.
Might it be one you'd live in
someday?"
We agree. "No."
'It's beautiful, but never home enough,
for me.'
~