Hill House

This guiltless heart is biting me down to the quick.
I am the highest thing;
Here, where crows reply to my shuffling footsteps
And my dogs tear off the yellow grass-heads
With their teeth.
The sky props itself up on me, feeling my distance,
My sorrow. It does not try to get too close.
Even the rain does not touch me.

Far away, the mists gossip sadly about the hills
Like a nosy crowd of strangers.
I am watched by magpies.
The bulbous house sits, groggily, on the hilltop.
It is ill: it has moss-growths, lichen
On its roofs, smoke stains from the chimney’s belch.
A person moves about a window;
A twitch in the house’s expression, a wink.

Inside the house, proclamations of books-spines:
Loss. Attachment. Separation. My father,
The analyst and separator.
The one who extracted himself, so politely and scrupulously,
From this our hilltop, our sagging castle.
Henceforth, the walls are transparent. I see them,
I erect them, mend them when missing mildews
Their tender flesh. And he walks through them.
The wood bristles, shakes itself lugubriously,
And the wind ignores us, as usual,
Carrying up toward the taller hills.