Remodeling A House Poem by Hans Ostrom

We were after other forms, more light.
The house itself suggested other versions
of itself, faces within a face.

Rooms refused to add up. We
petitioned partitions. Shadows
fell against their will.

Blue meant one kind of life,
yellow quite another. Annuities of fate
sat in paint cans, quiet, unmixed.

In Plato’s formal heaven, two-by-fours
are Two By Four, grainless, ideal.
Here lumber rankles at our plain

plane geometry, gets nailed to the crosses
of our blueprints. We model, mold,
remold, remodel. And still we sigh.