Last weekend I lived in a house not my own. The house was both cute and mute. Mute until I entered the sunroom. As I entered the room, Luna, the gray-striped female cat meowed her way out. I gazed into the loveliest room in the house. Windows on three sides of the room presented lovely gardens outside. Snow white and flame-orange azaleas bloomed prolifically. Several smaller blue flowers interspersed the landscape understory along with early Hosta. Enormous hickories and oaks were in bloom as well.
“What are you staring at?” The sunroom questioned me.
“At the wonderful view out your windows.”
“Not half as good as my own view.”
“You’re a room and talking to me?”
“Not just any room, look around, I’m a writer’s room, specifically poetry.”
“Why poetry? I’m not a poet.”
“Stick around you will be, look at me.”
I glanced around the room. It seemed like there were as many plants on the inside of my sister’s house as on the outside. Rubber plants, split-leaf philodendron, snake plants, wandering Jew, and aloe vera were a fraction of the plants I was able to name. Even though my father was a botanist and my sister’s husband, Randy, a professor of botany, I knew the plants were my sister’s doing. A botanist’s wife with a green thumb created a sunroom for plants and writing. As I glanced around the room I was totally charmed. I could see how even I might become a poet in a room with such comfortable tables, love seats, chairs and pictures on the wall. The textures and layers of blankets and afghans shouted poetry.
“Well?”
“Oh, yes, quite charming," I answered. But still poetry?”
“What about my windows?” cried the sunroom.
“Ah, I’m seeing it now. They aren’t simple windows, windows on three sides with secondary curved windows above the straight windows. Charming. And the windows are sort of foggy, I like that.”
“See, but you must think about description much more. Get out a thesaurus.”
“You know, If I could just sit on the love seat and look around your lovely self, and if you’ll only be quiet, maybe I can write.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault you’re not writing?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just that…”
“I’m not good enough for you?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“Well, this room … uh…you, are nearly too perfect.”
“What do you mean now?”
“It’s like the group the Byrds.”
“What?”
“What I’m saying is their vocals, their blending, was nearly too perfect.”
“That’s ridiculous, get your paper and pen out and just write, write song lyrics if you must but I’m telling you poetry is the genre.”
I lay back in the love seat for a few minutes, glanced around the room and then through the foggy windows. As I peered out the windows a poem developed in my mind about the deep sea. I was in one of those submersibles gazing at the colorful sea life as azaleas and flowers were turned into fish and the enormous trees into underwater cliffs. The room was having its effect. My reverie was broken by a voice.
“I told you.”
A purring Luna jumped into my lap as I entered my first words on paper:
We peered out the submersible Luna and me Flame orange Angel fish swam in the sea…
Wow. Amazing what speaks when we are ready to listen.