after Richard McGuire

The room, a living room, has a crib in it. Then, years later, the room has been nearly emptied except for a couch with a pull-out bed. Time moves strangely. The room is no longer a room but a newly cleared area with a house being raised. A hundred years later the house is on fire. A half-century after that, four people sit in the room telling stories on a drunken fall afternoon. Later, the room is painted pale gray, with a flat-screen TV over the marble fireplace. A child does a cartwheel. First there are lace curtains, then dusty brown velvet. Time, strange, moves. Once again there is no room, but huddles of trees. Then dimness, rustling, couples slow-dancing in the room. Summer honeysuckle, spring birds. Snow after snow. Then a glacier, far in the past, far into the future. A man scrubs a stain on the rug. The moon comes through the old, old glass.