Solitary Swedish Houses

Photo by Nathaniel Shuman

A tangle of black spruce
and smokey moonbeams.
Here’s the sunken cottage
and no sign of life.

Until the morning dew murmurs
and an old man opens--
with a shaky hand--
the window and lets out an owl.

And further down,
the new house stands steaming
with the laundry butterfly
flapping at the gable

in a dying forest
where decay reads
the bark beetles’ records
through spectacles of sap.

Summer with towheaded rain
or a lone thunderhead
over a barking dog.
The seed kicks in the earth.

Troubled voices, faces
fly along telephone lines
on swift stunted wings
across miles of bogland.

The house on the river island
brooding over its cornerstones.

Steady plume of smoke—they’re burning
the forest’s secret papers.

The rain twists in the sky.
Light weaves through the river.
The houses on the cliff watch over
the waterfall’s white oxen.

Autumn with a mob of starlings
keeping the dawn at bay.
The people move stiffly
in the theater of lamplight.

Let them feel without fear
the hidden wings
and God’s energy
coiled up in the darkness.

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