Nine Years Old, Visiting Gene DeGruson's House

My dad needed to pick up something
he’d left at Gene’s house. An errand–
one of those little tasks adults do that means
you sit in the car or tag along feeling
that second flesh of boredom grow.

He parked the car at the curb
and showed me which way to walk.
Just over the trees I saw the tower,
with a roof that looked like a kite.
Just inside the trees, the house
was a stone monastery under
the broken prow of a fast ship.
The house was not a place for any
kind of adult that I knew. Only
a madman could live there. A recluse
in a lab coat pacing a room full
of red smoke and cobwebs of glass
vials and pipettes--maybe a whole
roomful of madmen, chained to stone
block walls, shouting manifestoes,
and clicking their foot-long fingernails.

We went inside, the door left open because
Gene was out that day, got whatever
it was Dad needed, and drove back home.
I sat in front seat, with ideas about what
it means to be adult, years of them,
drifting like broken moths’ wings
out of my head and through the open
window of that very quiet car.