Humble

Where the road ends,

where the land ends,

where layers of earth history

are revealed by the constant taking

of the sea,

a solitary house stands in ocean spray.

Once filled with life, no one lives here.

All is abandoned, yet it still makes a stand

in the place where the people of the whale lived.

You’d think whatever forces there are

would at least have taken this into their arms,

embraced in love,

but even stars come apart

in the play of universal wind.

I love this house of unrest,

the handiwork ever to be outdone

by the carpenter of wind,

the craftsman of waves.

As for me, loving the lone house

perhaps because it is so like the body,

that other amazing architecture waiting,

also believing the world should open its arms

and hold it in a great kindness,

not merely to be salt and skin, dissolving

day by day.