Doc's House

I cleaned for the smartest man I have ever met;
the biggest house I ever cleaned,
the least used rooms I have ever seen.
Five bedrooms, all with beds, child size,
different colors common beige and baby blue,
burn tan with orange accents and wooden furniture
painted white like the canopy bed of my childhood.

The kitchen housed coffee at least two days old,
so thick a spoon stood on its tip and still
I could never scoop it out. Grounds running
rampant in the back of the coffee maker,
swimming in water the color of the caramel couch
in the never used den.

Stove sitting in silence cold, bare, greaseless
misused for abandonment and a microwave
splattered with dinners taken out of
restaurants I will never be able to afford.

Yet, this man, this Einstein, brilliant in his
ever researched papers and expert court opinions
said to the girl his age, living far away, as he
begged for the rarest of kindnesses, that all her woes
could be erased with the stroke of a pen on a check.

I stood in his five bedroom, living room, den, dining room
master bedroom, three baths, laundry room, study,
empty, misused house, and wondered how many women it
would take before he stopped buying the big houses and
started living in the rooms that matter.