He bought the house to burn it down.
He bought the land to burn down the house.
He loved a thing for its demise, its sundering,
for birds flying through as if the house were a removed window.
The walls were still sturdy, there was furniture,
which he allowed friends to carry off. He bought the flames,
the crumbling, the pitch, the roof bowing and giving.
Give has that meaning as well.
And now the outhouse that belongs to the Muellers
has given way, opened like a flower in the woods near us.
The house itself is dark-faced, incomprehensible, what’s left.
Where are the Muellers? Don’t tell me you don’t feel
those losses, too, that you wish you’d seen the burning,
the outhouse burst open, that you aren’t tantalized.
At the top of Woody Knoll hill the ancient Airstream
is on its side. I wish my childhood would precisely
reconstruct itself so I could see what it was I didn’t see,
vulgar or not. I wish I could burn it down, but it is already
burned to the ground. He watched the house burn.
The firetruck came and watched it burn. It was his
burning, he tended it with his eyes since it was barely
contained, spit and whistle and swirl, hunger
and satiation swallowing each other. It feels wrong.
The old wasn’t that bad. It just kept on being a threshold.
It kept on undoing itself so the burden could shift.