cabin

the good cedar

worn brick-red by lantern light

and pregnant with the warmth

of shoulder-brushes

 

my mother’s flannel

older than I am

and heavy with the ballast

of sawdust, Tracy Chapman, three lives,

vitality

 

new pine walls

built from the ceiling down

housing a trail of brown sugar

and voles in tittering communion

 

a cast iron stove

bearing the ashes of twenty-two winters

and friend to a family

of hands calloused, painted, numb,

held