Love is the salvage of rapture.
A house built with lumber taken up
from the fallen-down dance hall
abandoned along Austin Creek
when Cazadero was a resort town.
Salvaged, stacked, hauled away;
the old square nails pulled,
new ones driven.
Patient, passionate, plumb, and true.
A house began at the end of a wrecking bar
and finished with shingles lapped in courses,
hammered down tight
against the hell-bent February winds
and the rainy-day raptures of flight.
A house big enough for privacy,
solid enough to hold the light,
the roof caulked at every seam
and the floor of maple tongue-and-groove
already worn smooth
by a thousand midnight waltzes
when it was Spring and the moon was full
and dancers seemed to glide on air,
the men nervously handsome,
the women with flowers in their hair.
Ghost town salvage, built from scratch.
Built by faith, and sweat, and care.
Listening into the materials hard enough to hear
the dancers’ laughter drift downstream
and puzzle the otters and owls.
Built of the pleasures that last beyond relief.
Built by the exacting of the real.
The refinement, not the seizure.
The diamond cutter,
not the diamond thief.
Plumb, square, and true.
The house way out at the end of the ridge.
The diamond in the dancers’ minds.
The amazing emptiness of moonlight
flooding the dance floor.