Dance, house.
White as a corpse in moonlight,
in sunlight white as a small hill of salt.
Dance in your wig of rain streaming from the eaves.
We who pass through you, who sleep
under your asphalt-shingled hat
are little more than ghosts.
The earth might move or it might not,
but thunder comes knocking almost every day in the summer.
How long can you sit while the moon circles like a madman
& flowers fade?
You don’t have forever, that sterile seed.
Somewhere on the other side of the world,
with nothing but water beneath it,
a white sail rocks.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Bridge to Nowhere
- Natural Faculties
- (Re-)Claiming the Body
- Ceiling snakes
- Train Song
- Surgery of the Absurd
- Notes toward a taxonomy of sadness
- Weeding
- Blanket
- Forecast
- Curriculum Vitae
- Lullaby
- Fist
- On Reading The Separate Rose by Pablo Neruda
- Gibbous
- Song of the Millipede
- Autumn haibun
- Bread & Water
- Jersey Shore
- Initiation
- October dusk
- Goodnight moon
- Antidote
- The Starlings
- To the Child I Never Had
- Ambitions
- Learn Harmonica Today
- Two-line haiku
- Sleeper Cell
- Unchurched
- Turnips
- Homiletics
- Magic Carpet
- When the Wind is Southerly
- Connection
- Ground Beetle
- Étude for the World’s Smallest Violin
Beautiful! I love this.
this could be my new dave bonta favorite!
This is wonderfully unsettling.
Hi all, thanks for liking this! For once I kind of like it myself, too. I’m just not sure it’s really a lullaby. I’m thinking it might be some kind of spell or incantation instead.
It’s as much a lullaby – and as unnerving – as hushaby baby. Anyway, very nice.
As in “When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall”? I hadn’t thought of that. Good point.
This reminds me of Mary Oliver’s poem about her house – can’t think of the title – but there’s something so personal, comforting, and familiar about even that word (house) that’s universal. I like how the people haunt the house in this one – although the house is ghost-like as well.
Hmm, if it’s by Mary Oliver, I’ve probably read it. An unconscious influence, perhaps! Let me know if you think of the title. At any rate, glad you liked my take.