All I Know is that I Built this House
James Tipton
All I know is that I built this house
in order to dream, and it only happened
after years of gathering, pocket by pocket,
a little earth here and there until
I had enough at last to put a house upon
and some earth still left to fill the heart
when dawn came knocking at the door.
I built this house with sea and desert canyons,
with the words of ordinary people,
with autumns without money,
with hands dusted with dark flour,
with old hats and rain and honey,
and with the sturdy smiles of the poor.
I built this house with the fragrances
of all the women I have ever loved,
and while I was working high in the air,
I remembered how they arrived,
one by one, in secret, offering me
wine bottles filled with rosy poems.
I think now that I can entertain gypsies
and peasants and set up a mail box
that receives only poems, and I can
have pot lucks for indomitable poets
and closet saints; and be sure to bring
a singing casserole, and wear shoes
that can leap out of the world.
James
Tipton lives in
Chapala, in the tropical mountains of southern Mexico, where he writes poetry
and enjoys village life. His work is widely published, including credits
in The Nation, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The
Greensboro Review, Esquire, FIELD, International Poetry Review, Christian
Science Monitor, Mountain Gazette, American Literary Review, El Ojo del Lago,
Lake Chapala Review, Living at Lake Chapala, and Mexico Connect.
His most recent collection of poems, Letters from a Stranger,
with a Foreword by Isabel Allende (Conundrum Press, 1998), won the 1999
Colorado Book Award in Poetry.