Bulldoze my childhood home. Bulldoze used-to-be.

I don’t need the cold, clear creek, its banks choked

with blackberry vines. I won’t want to visit the mulberry trees,

once sticks staked in the lawn, knee-high to nothing.

The biggest one now stretches its muscular branches

to the edge of the grass. Protecting and cooling.

Leave the tree.  Don’t bulldoze the tree.

 

Bulldoze the empty chicken coops and wire fences,

the site of the old swimming pool, left to rot and ruin.

Wood returned to its birth ground, vinyl disintegrated,

where bull frogs congregated.

Let the cold-water counting and dive-dares and hot deck planks

under little feet remain, dripping and happy, unaware.

 

Pull down the unfinished garage, column by column, post by post,

lower the roof without help from the neighbors.

This is time for un-rejoicing.  This is time for shaking our heads.

 

Bulldoze the new deck, without grapevines or rose bushes in pots.

I won’t want the add-on bedroom, or the old fireplace

with Santa’s never-happened footprints.

Here rests stripping off paper from presents soon forgotten,

and candy and bathrobes and cigarettes.

 

Pull down the supporting beams, collapse the living room,

strip away the wood paneling, finally out of style.

Melt down the old wood stoves and make something new,

like a monument to taking advantage, or the statue of a traitor.

Pull up the forty-year-old linoleum for God’s sake,

put it out of its harvest-gold misery.

 

Bulldoze the rest of it when my back is turned.

Bulldoze used-to-be. Bedroom walls painted pink and yellow,

little-girl décor, the falling-apart toy chest.

Barbie’s dream house will have to be torn down too.

 

Salt the earth and let it lay fallow. Let a generation pass and then another.

The oak trees can spread out and the mulberries can canopy.

Stellar jays can screech again. Squirrels can repopulate knotholes,

and roll oak balls onto branches, dropping them without making a sound.

Turn the soil of the driveway, let wild grass seed spread.

Let the caterpillars and dragonflies come back.

I won’t turn to say goodbye but I will raise a hand as I go.