David Southward

BACK  |  CONTENTS  |  NEXT

A House Hunter’s Wish Listing

Find me a house
with a view of green trees,
a garden so fertile it flowers with ease,
and neighbors who won’t shut their windows and grouse
at music I’m playing.
Find me that house!

Show me a house
that’s been kept with such care
no faucet is drippy; no drawer needs repair;
no crevice has widened enough for a mouse
to smuggle a breadcrumb.
Show me that house!

Sell me a house
near a market and park,
with sidewalks that glow in the moon-silver dark,
where no one will notice me swaying to Strauss
while rinsing the spinach.
Sell me that house!

Or build me a house:
on a ridge by a stream,
with nooks for my books and a loft with a beam.
Coffee from Kenya, chopsticks from Laos—
the world in my pantry.
Build me that house!

Dream me a house
with intangible doors;
with skylights and catwalks and trampoline floors;
with fountains to swim in at night with my spouse
and clocks that tick backward.
Dream me that house!

David Southward grew up in Southwest Florida and teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020) and Apocrypha, a sonnet sequence based on the Gospels (Wipf & Stock 2018). David resides in Milwaukee with his husband, Geoff, and their two beagles. Read more at davidsouthward.com.