Home Improvement - Guest Post by Taylor Graham

Poetry by Taylor Graham and Photo by Joanne Olivieri (Poetic Shutterbug)
I really did not have a photo that fit the poem but for some reason I liked the above pic with the verse. Enjoy!

HOME IMPROVEMENT

We’re blackbirds in search of a nest here, among
the aisles that taste of new-milled lumber and
sawdust in fluorescent sparkles, leading to the Paint
Center with its color-chips that ring like china
in a farmhouse cupboard. I run my finger over cool
adobe tile and carpet samples that smell of tabby fur,
a hearth cat who lives at peace with blackbirds.
No, a blackbird barely survives here, out of the rain
that artilleries the roof; he lives on bolts and wing-
nuts, disappears into high-gloss Ebony. You’ve got
your cart loaded with rolls of stockwire fence and
studded T-posts we’ll haul home to drive into bed-
rock-mortar, throwing a line around old Miwok
kitchens that were open-air to ridge and canyon
before this range was subdivided. Miwoks gone
out of mind like birds in the rafters. We’ve paid our
plastic for metal, now the sliding doors swish
us fare-thee-well and whisper shut behind us.
A warehouse blackbird is a homeless lot.