If The Plasterboard Could Talk Poem by Mark Heathcote

Each pane of glass a nacreous eye
Looking in or out?
If it could talk, pass on its myriad secrets.
From a spider web to the chimney top,
From the cellar to the attic, each floorboard creek
Each wardrobe costume change
What would it tell? So many memories,
So, so many harlequin tears, so many arguments
Love's last salvo, but how many shots were fired?
If the plasterboard could talk, speak through ongoing repairs.
And if the bath water gurgled up
It's discharged contents; would it be memorable?
Not in a sad way, but in a good way.
Would it remember a marriage or a home birth?
Babies in bubble bath soap.
Those Easter egg hunts, a garden full of wistful flowers.
Dad's fall-down dilapidated, wonky-decorating ladders.
How many indiscretions would it also testify to?
Here we'd want to cram cotton wool into our ears.
Go back to each pane of glass, each glaucoma silhouette.
Each nacreous eye and close all shutters shut.
Looking in or out of a house holds so many secrets.
Secrets that are even maybe best kept.
Like an Alice in Wonderland Dormouse for a family pet.