Street of Blue Houses

There is a street nearby
Where the houses are blue,
Painted in a monochrome rainbow
Of shades of sorrow.

Never have I seen so many
Houses of one color
In a row. There are no children
In their yards.
No dogs bark,
No cats cry for milk at the back doors,
And the windows are shuttered in the twilight
When it is often such a delight
To see rooms inside while strolling.
The yellow light streams out
To the sidewalk
From the brown ones, the white ones, the green and red ones,
And the brick ones. These issue invitations;
Their dusk rooms come to get me
And draw me inside, as they gather memory
Or happiness or comfort to themselves.
I am swept inside.

But not the Blue Houses.
They have closed doors. They have cooler chimneys,
From which the smoke does not curl.
They have cleaner porches,
Free of tricycles, ball bats, winter boots;
They have closed garages,
Detritus not visible from the sidewalk or the road.

One Springtime, alert with forsythia, I will pass
And there will be scraping, priming;
One Summertime, bees humming in the choir, I will pass
And there will be tan, orange, gold or yellow
Rising by slow stria over the regret,
Blotting it out sill by batten, shingle by clapboard.

I will hear the Blue Houses take a collective breath
And gulp in great gouts of light,
As cool turns to warm, and January becomes August
For one of their kind. Inside, a slow sound will begin--
A ticking over of gears, a humming of wires,
A gurgle of water in crusted ancient pipes
Which will burst forth from the tap any moment
In a crystalline surge, and wet the dust below.

And the Blue Houses, sleeping, will wake
To morning being painted on their hearts.