Eaves

I can't help but tell the stories of doors, of old houses, of hearth and fire. In the world I want, we tell the small tales and we listen.

Eaves


A warm creak 
to this house,
a wooden tense,
a wind batters the hull,
shutters clap, reveal rain.

From his chair, in the crook  of his arm, the iron poker 
and his flock is hearth and fire and logs and a hewn kettle, 
lionized and rough, it breathes a constant note.
An axe kneels at the door,
a slim gun winks or dozes.

The fire stretches fingers over what was 
their heavened bed, her shoes in footprints beside
where she let them rest.

And tonight,
his pipe will bring no comfort
though he gnashes the bit.
The smoke’s hug is grey fog 
rather than mist,
the plumes, smog
rather than of bread, of work, of earned heat.

Still it comes,
in the whispered morn,
turned over again, his hand
to her pillow a familiar cold—
she’d surely risen long before,
careful not to wake him.