Decline

The house's thin skin vibrates with the hum of the air conditioner that displaces day's heat within these walls while augmenting it without, burning ancient whiffs of fuel. All day, all this land has swilled heat, the sultry air has curled oak leaves and sweated resin from the pines. Now night brings cooling breezes. My window admits the half-moon's light, and reflects it. A passing bird might see the house-eyes wink at the sky. The sky is in on the joke. To the heaved land these small structures are less than the forest they displaced, and sooner gone. Buildings are like foam frothed on the moon-dragged sea's wind-born waves. I have stayed cool for the time it takes a few leaves to find autumn. The millennia of accumulated soil on which the house takes brief repose give up another few hours of the sun's labor which rises now, invisible, a subtler vibration to outlast that which the machinery has just ceased to make. I now can hear the prehistoric crickets chirp a rapid chorus, wave on wave.

( Sunday Verse )