The House Is

In the trees, the house is

Big and small,

Without and within

When the wind blows, the trees speak

And the shutters make as though to leap

From the borders of the windows

And inside he is

He is, that great marvel, he is

In his chair, with a book in his hands

With a dictionary on the arm,

Doglike, faithful

The windowpanes thick with years are his lampshade

The clouds are roaming onward west

The sound of his pages turning, the sound of

Small, soft, quick hearts in the forest

Downy feathers in the trees, and

Hooves on stones framing riverbeds,

Audible from the kitchen table

The foot of a page marks a change in the wind

Circling through the halls and the rooms

He lifts his eyes and his obedient head follows

The wild is in his hair like the mane of a wolf, but

He is ever gentle, ever in touch with

The soft things, the grass lying flat on the hills

From his chair he rises, the dog lifts his trapezoidal head

To watch his movements toward the door

The light through the window, the clouds in their migration

Stop, pause patiently like cows in a field

Await his return,

Countrymen camped in waiting upon their king

The floorboards creak beneath his feet

He comes to the kitchen with

A smile on hand, a murmured word

But no express objective

A clattering in the kitchen, a ceramic clinking

Water, then silence, then

The smell of warm, spices and autumn

He comes to the table

A mug in the calloused life of his right hand

Which he sets to the upper right of my papers

Hung with charcoal gray cursive streamers,

A celebration in their own existence

He fills the chair next to mine the way sunshine fills a valley,

To overflowing, to chills on the base of your neck

To thoughts of God and potential

And he asks how it is going

And his caring bleeds through the thin of his shirt

And the house is full within, and without

The clouds move on like wandering cows