Losing North Vernon

Again this business of sorting through
and breaking down a home: crates of photos, closets
of old clothes, a bridgeless violin,
three stacks of sheet music, frayed,
and yellow as bone.
 

Houses are like rafts. I mean,
on my way down last night, a tire blew. It was the middle of a cornfield.
The high stalks lapped, the breeze light. Me—there some hours
before anyone passed and in that time the spaces
between each plant seemed more and more wrong—doors
to some musky dark, furrows that surely turned
deep instead of long. At dawn, I began to see
a gray farm house, sunk—back end, in that light, indistinguishable
from the ground, and felt a weight like seeing
someone you may or may not know near death. How different
the look: deflated body, ash-tinted skin,
and so, not still, exactly, but a slight, steady trembling.
 

A black lab stands in the elm's shade.
He's been there all morning, facing the house.
I wonder who owns the dog. And the town
that should be just south of here,
I wonder where it's gone. Grandmother first,
then Joy. Aunt Louise. Now Howard,

in the home. He doesn't recognize us. He talks about the war. He asks
to see his mother. Someone ask him what year it is,
if there's anything he needs.

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