The House on the Hillside Opposite

The house among the trees on the hillside opposite is visible in the afternoon light.

I could not see it this morning nor yesterday evening, but now I see its rusted roof;

it shows in a gap between the fir trees. Four cleared fields bound by stone walls

and crossed by an overgrown path are a napkin fixed at its neck; behind it,

the hill rises, a patchwork of confer, fern and heather: rough, poor terrain.

The house, empty of its people but their belongings remaining where they were.

Mountain sheep come near but don’t trespass; the trees, however, will. They will

break and enter, force their way through the walls, dismantle the roof, split the floors.

The effects of a household will mix with leaf litter: bottles, cups, saucers, a necklace,

an old radio, a hammer, an iron, a light shade, the cheap picture frames, a tin box

with buttons still inside, no, the buttons with the black flakes of rust mixed through.

All will be buried in the soil, but not the people.

They are already in the soil, but not the same soil, nor anywhere in these parts;

they are buried across the sea, where necessity took them.

So the house was of no use; the possessions had no use, not even to looters or vandals.

How strange are lives that can be so intense minute by minute and, yet, one morning,

bags packed, a home is left with all its paraphernalia in place; the fields are left, the hillside left,

and for love or health or money, what was once all can suddenly be valueless.