CLOSING COSTS

Muffled in the rustling of papers,
Sign here, initial there:
We have sold the house:
Fifty years,
Same family, same phone number.
Scott and Alice are young;
They will redecorate
With colors I do not need to see.
What follows we choose to call
The next part, and not the last.
Alice will have to pick up
The rest of the fallen camellia blooms.

***

Supermarket, Alton, N.H.

New grocery store:
Aloe leaves, sugarcane stalks:
Things that don’t grow here.

***

Robert Demaree is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. The author of a history of Greensboro Day School and a collection of poems called New Hampshire Pond, he has had over 200 poems published or accepted by 70 periodicals, including Aethlon, Cold Mountain Review, Louisville Review, Mobius, Offerings, and Paris/Atlantic.