Ellen Bass: Taking Off the Front of the House

I'm at the kitchen table, drinking strong tea, eating eggs
with poppy-gold yolks from our chickens, Marilyn and Estelle.
There's a red car parked across the street and my neighbor's gorgeous irises,
their frilled tongues tasting the air.

"Monsanto is suing Vermont," I say, turning the pages of the Times.

I say it loud because Janet's in the living room

in the faded chair the cat has scratched into hay

eating yogurt and the strawberries she brought home from the field

where she labors to relieve the tender berry of its heavy chemical load.

"What?" she says. She isn't wearing her hearing aids

so I take a breath and project my voice. And as I enunciate the corporate evils,

suddenly the front of the house is sheared away.

We're on a stage, the audience seated on the asphalt of Younglove Avenue,

watching this quirky couple eat their breakfast and yell

back and forth from one room to another.

And throughout the day, as I throw a load of laundry 

in the dryer, answer the phone, as she lies on the couch

reading Great Expectations and we bicker

about the knocking in the pipes and whether we really need to call a plumber,

I admire how the actor who plays the character of me

and the actor who plays the character of her

perform our parts so perfectly

in this production that will last

just a little while before it closes for good.

And when night comes, we smoke a little weed - something called Thunder Fuck,

which must be someone's high opinion of himself,

but in truth is quite nice, though we only take a couple tokes

since Janet's on blood pressure medication and she can't

do the way she did at twenty when she slung a goatskin bag

over her shoulder and wandered around Senegal in flip-flops.

As I reach for her, she says, "Now the audience can sit on the back deck

by the barbecue and this play can be called

The Old Lesbians Go to Bed at the End of the Day."

I light the candle her mother gave me for my last birthday

when she could still put on her lipstick.

The set is authentic - a messy stack of books on my nightstand,

on her side, the hearing aids that sit there all day.

And as she turns toward me and I feel again

the marvelous architecture of her hips, the moon,

that expert in lighting, rises over the roofline,

flooding us in her flawless silvery wash.