Old Houses

Old Houses
BY ROBERT CORDING
Year after year after year
I have come to love slowly

how old houses hold themselves—

before November’s drizzled rain
or the refreshing light of June—

as if they have all come to agree
that, in time, the days are no longer
a matter of suffering or rejoicing.

I have come to love
how they take on the color of rain or sun
as they go on keeping their vigil

without need of a sign, awaiting nothing

more than the birds that sing from the eaves,
the seizing cold that sounds the rafters.

THE ABANDONMENT
The moment when the sky turned to one solid Plate of grey beginning its dull spread From no definable point at all;
When every thrasher and bank swallow And kite who called Called from far away, out of earshot
Behind the flat predictable hills of common grey; When every insect that rose Rose motionless above the lake and became an invisible
Silent-grey against the plate-grey sky; When the rough-bark backs of the toads sank With no effort, out of sight
Into the rough-bark beds of mud slowly smoothing themselves
To an indifferent sky-pale sheen And the lines of the spider lilies bent backward
Into themselves blending perfectly with the boundaries Of the floating hearts moving in and out Of their own vacillating facts;
And the name of the blue teal’s cry merged Without detection into the name Of the dissipating odor of the butterfly pea;
When the breezes stood stockstill Over the empty, unnoticeably quiet Waters of grey,
That was the same moment When the pen rolled into the infinity

cover photo by Keith D. Kurman