When You Were an Adolescent, You First Noticed Ugly Houses Sprawl in Pretty Places

Half a century,
With all its doings,
Worked a lot of change,

But it’s true in North
America still,
That the homes folks make

Where the natural
Beauty is intense
Are almost always

Pictures of decay,
Of desuetude
Or incompletion,

Even on estates
Meant for second homes—
The perimeters

Conceal raw projects
Kept under blue tarps
Or canvas blankets.

It’s as if nature
Intimidated
With too much beauty

Or as though surplus
Of scenic beauty
Made a tidy home

Seem slightly foolish—
But this isn’t true
Around the whole world,

After all. Maybe
Something more local
Governs the habit

Of half-finished sheds,
Cabins in Tyvek,
Fowl pens, lumber piles,

Trailers up on blocks,
The last, too-large house
On a double lot

In the incomplete
Subdivision chain
Of pseudo-mansions,

Just sitting empty,
A lonely tribute
To the mountain range

Rising behind it,
Or to the ocean
Rising toward it.

Cauliflower Grows More Contagious

Stag beetles and buttons, Sequoia
Announced as the topics over lunch
On that penultimate afternoon

Of another astronomical
Summer, one that had happened to start
Under the threat of imminent death

And that was ending on this drive home
From home, that is from emotional
Home to legal place of residence,

From Slocanada to Springdale,
Still under threat of imminent death,
But an imminence that was feeling

Less imminent with every good breath.
Stag beetles, buttons, cauliflower,
Sequoia had amended her list.

We were dragging out that lunch, that last
Meal on the north side of the border,
Under a glass roof mesmerizing

In storms and blinding on sunny days.
We joked about food and what lives do
To make meals of more lives making meals—

In the end, we took a box to go,
Crossed back over the border in sun,
Turned to face an imminent season.