The Old Hardware Store

Before they filled it with unflappable vagabonds,
My grandparents’ house was an old hardware store.

Now it's full of salmon, paper, and coats. 

They made poetry out of the rough wood,  
and pulled poetry through the wide rain battered windows. 

The fisherman found his fish; 
The painter found her paints. 

Resting on their coffee table, 
is a well battered book: 
What is a Number? 

In a cacophony of fist banging, weed, and Neruda,
my grandparents dared to boom the smallest possible questions.

To build good soil, 
we buy our salmon local, 
we paint the sky a brilliant grey, 
and we adress even numbers with passion.