Farmhouse

Every time I smell wet plaster it is 1964.
My father is coaxing a huddled group to scrape
five layers of century old flowered wallpaper from
a wall in a farmhouse he bought the night before.
He is energetic and hurried. The sun has already gone
down and the lanterns are too close. Flames may burn
the paper tails and feather-like hangings; abandoned
plucks left by others before we got here.
He shouts, “Scrape, peel, don’t rip!”
I’m six and wonder why my hands have to be so cold
in this place I don’t know, with an upstairs
I’ve never seen.
It is winter. The summer frogs and crickets
have gone underground. My breath is a white cloud
that breathes and does not speak. I do not know
rubbery legs will stretch and push across grey ponds
edged with crowds of canary grass. I do not know
their skin will begin to crack from the sun’s heat, but they
will fly and dive, become a darker, softer green. I do not know
they will be my friends when the wallpaper is long burned,
and the freezing water will no longer seep through
my gloves as I pick and peel the paper like a peach,
as he bends over a bucket washing green cabbage
roses from his fingertips.