May, 2020
We stop on our walk in time of plague
before a house hollowed out, look at
the gutted in future’s name. Windows
shattered, only frames left, like
eye-sockets emptied of eyeballs. Doors
disappeared, breath sucked out, house
become the unhouse. Concrete roof
declaring flat, dumb weight on block
walls, mouth-holes open. We look
through this hollow box, where even
bats refuse to hang themselves in sleep.
Nothing to hold our eyes, background
and foreground one, how to sort out,
blurred as are the days of our own
isolation in known rooms become
unknown. Innocent, utter emptiness
nothing rather than something, house
of subtraction like my land’s your land’s
houses. Thought we knew caves, knew
tunnels, but we stand looking at neither
in plague time, question our seeing
through, our looking at a box unto itself
like a sculpture, alone among houses,
lawns, scattered toys, cats, a house
hearing only the barks of a dog so
relentless it must possess three heads,
asking can we still see ourselves. From
this box of emptiness even the fox turns
away like UPS. How do we explain to
the children? What stories? How to live
so? For here it is to be without a body.
Ghost sound in the shellhouse of sirens
on distant roads, think absence, no
Facebook, Twitter, or Dow, think perfect
Zoom backdrop in the world inviting us
like neighbors. Open now to future
fullness? House confident as a patient,
waiting boxcar, certain as the plague
undoing place, embrace, and certainty.
David Sten Herrstrom
We stop on our walk in time of plague
before a house hollowed out, look at
the gutted in future’s name. Windows
shattered, only frames left, like
eye-sockets emptied of eyeballs. Doors
disappeared, breath sucked out, house
become the unhouse. Concrete roof
declaring flat, dumb weight on block
walls, mouth-holes open. We look
through this hollow box, where even
bats refuse to hang themselves in sleep.
Nothing to hold our eyes, background
and foreground one, how to sort out,
blurred as are the days of our own
isolation in known rooms become
unknown. Innocent, utter emptiness
nothing rather than something, house
of subtraction like my land’s your land’s
houses. Thought we knew caves, knew
tunnels, but we stand looking at neither
in plague time, question our seeing
through, our looking at a box unto itself
like a sculpture, alone among houses,
lawns, scattered toys, cats, a house
hearing only the barks of a dog so
relentless it must possess three heads,
asking can we still see ourselves. From
this box of emptiness even the fox turns
away like UPS. How do we explain to
the children? What stories? How to live
so? For here it is to be without a body.
Ghost sound in the shellhouse of sirens
on distant roads, think absence, no
Facebook, Twitter, or Dow, think perfect
Zoom backdrop in the world inviting us
like neighbors. Open now to future
fullness? House confident as a patient,
waiting boxcar, certain as the plague
undoing place, embrace, and certainty.
David Sten Herrstrom