Steam Heat

Houses hold us in their tropic waterfalls: 
The glacial slide of southern seas, the click
And hiss of chambered steam, slick seashell whorl
And roller coaster ride of water’s mystic

Curl, float us now in pools of sounds, the swell
And surge of seismic grounds that tear
At floor and coral in our house, where wall-like kelp
And sill-like sponge still wreathe the air

In streams of tidal spill and weave, swirls
Of global warmth around our slurping pipes
And ill domestic sleaves: plumbing might cure all
The pagan rhythms of a random type

Of world, if waves could fold us into rhyme
Inside the oceans of the current time.