it’s raining rats and dogs
or ferrets and hampsters,
carp and salamanders—
hell, you know what I mean, a hard rain
smacking the windows and grass,
pooling into mini-lakes in our back yard.

the sump pump, my hero,
is working on a fifteen second rest cycle.
i guess we need it, it’s spring and all,
flowers and bushes and trees taking in the rain
to create, again, our garden of Eden
minus the apple tree which we cut down
with the full knowledge
it was dying. a mercy kill. but it’s stuck forever
in my memory of this place
which we call home, for now.

there’ll come a time
when we’ll have to sell, when this house
will be a burden
we can’t manage, and some new family will move in,
two kids and a dog, and the house will wrap its arms
around them, and it will become their home,
not ours.

but that’s how
the world works—
it takes you in and loves you with its big old heart
until it takes you out, swallows you whole,
forgets your name and face,
the sound of your tiny voice.

– David James

Author’s Note: Having retired after forty-five years of working in higher education, my thoughts naturally drift toward the final journey we all have to walk. We can’t escape it; it’s a part of life. This poem grew out of the idea that someone else will live in this house, our house, at some point in the future, and we’ll become memories in the minds of our loved ones.