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SHACK

Well, that's over.
And I am once again where I was
But differently the same.
You cannot open too much, too often --
It is like a banging door in a high wind:
The hinges break off, and you are left,
hanging. As happened here.
The sun whitens the pictures
Left unprotected in the room where
Surely curtains once set off
Houseproud wallpaper.
Emptiness and its debris squat everywhere.
Broken glass underfoot, in the eyes, in the heart.

The seasons sag the shack in the woods.
Spring is worse than winter
for a shack in the woods.

It is hard to say, but
The flies and the spiders whisper the truth --
There is nothing that loves in the woods:

Only this banging door,
this high wind,
and the sun along the dying walls
Whitening memory.

Peter T. (c1990)