In the framed black and white photograph

on the wall of your rented furnished condominium,

you imagine a hidden garden of blue cornflowers.

It drifts in the acid residue.   In this black and white

photograph, the garden you imagine is beyond

a narrow passageway between two buildings.

For you, it exists in spite of this jerrybuilt

investment condominium.  And you imagine

someone, perhaps it is you, in the hidden part

of the photograph; you, a child, are looking over

a plank fence to where surely (you imagine)

a grandfather is nailing together piece by careful

piece, an original wooden doll house

(not yours, it was never yours).   In reality you once

watched him, that grandfather beyond the fence,

with your own trust in miracles, at age six.

In the room where the photograph (not yours) hangs,

a montage sharp as the odor of fresh sawdust.

You put your hand against the striated silence.

What are these things that draw toward us,

these visitors who hide among us,

who are as the air that enters,

giving and taking away.