A Second House Fall’s apple crop from a diseased tree in the front yard grounded, munched noiselessly by deer who easily leap our picket fence as though it were an invitation Moles in the pasture unseen push up mounds of dirt in their busyness, building felt pathways for their blind lives Winter rains near doubled leave flooded fields for ducks and snow geese to visit on their seasonal flights to somewhere south of instinct, our name for our ignorance If hunger were entitlement we’d not be living this tarted-up world-ache preferring fantasy to ordinary life insuring perpetual discontent The house we build in thought always adding on, outgrowing us falls away to footloose truth becoming a second house a flat-land hut, really a single room, no door, all windows An earth observatory the whole world comes to visit with room-sized songs and stories A second house waits patiently within our discontent marking timelessness before (excusing incongruity) during and after, in -lessness for notice it does not depend on Falling away are tundra, arctic ice coral reefs, hammerhead shark, giant sequoia, Monarch butterfly, their newly fluid forms merging their stories come to us in hearing already heard out of time, before and since we thought ourselves entitled
Don Brandis is a retired healthcare worker living quietly near Seattle. His poems have been published in Leaping Clear, Free State Review, Neologism Poetry Review, Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere.
Amethyst Review 