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.