Corner Alone

In the quietest house in the world,
Small things are still moving,
Little lives and bits of entropy
Are settling and finding things rearranged.

Even on empty evenings, even
On sunny mornings when no one’s about,
In the quietest house in the world,
Something’s busy with its webs,
Something’s biting down.

The dust of the flies’ lives fill the corners.
The wood and plaster shift with the strain
Of being brought around from night to day
And from afternoon, quietly, back to night.

Even here, the shearing forces
Bear down and bite down and bear down,
And mostly they work, the flesh gets cut,
But sometimes a tooth breaks.