Settled and replete, the house calm-closured
on lights left burning, ninety years accustomed
to its isolation. Hard rain hard to hear
through stubborn walls, only a borderless

exhalation, as if mist could provoke
the sound of a heart beat. We have no weight here
within the land's slow breath. I am recognizing
how my laying aside of magazines, medications

for the dogs, books and vests, CDs and newspapers
costs us the use of so many comforts: it would take ten,
fifteen minutes to clear the clutter from any coffee table,
trunk, or Chinese chest to find a blanket on a cold night,

to find a vase, to lay hands on a photo album
or a Dymo labeler. Our bed is complicated by decorative
pillows, a patchwork throw. This morning the fog
perseveres. Every hidden thing balks at revelation,

no sound evokes the road two miles below. I am bewildered
to think with low, soft longing of my husband. Is it only
ordinary, regarding one's mate, to descend
into muddy sloughs of disinterest, impassively remark

the hardening of contempt's cold crust? To observe neglected
love drain off through stones then silver back again
lisping through some door's ajar? Receipts and stamped documents
in a paper sack, head ducked, come out of the weather,

love stands in its dripping raincoat, pretends
to be looking for its watch.

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a fourth generation Californian, l.a. seidensticker is as much of a hermit as she can afford to be. She and her husband have been dividing their time between a recently acquired small cabin in Montana wilderness and their Sonoma County veterinary practice...

so far this has inspired more fatigue than poetry. on the other hand, the veterinary clinic is very busy and often noisy; the northwest corner of Montana is neither.
 

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