This righteous house

on its Northbothnian hill of till

stands firm

against the onslaught of the wind;

the dark beating its windows,

its old body creaking;

all the nails grabbing hold,

its silhouette cutting into the driving rain

This house

rides a full-rigged intent

into the stormy seas of time;

a whole century keel-hauled in its wake

This house is a sage

wandering these introverted horizons

into the dark;

a deep red approximation

in endless coniferous forests;

random window reflections

streaking off signs of life

This house is a beacon

on a rock of awareness

in raging death;

an eastern eye gazing;

the reading lamp by my bed

a desolate sign of resistance

deep inside the nature of darkness

This house

is a Björk Guðmundsdóttir timber truck

hauling loads of stacked thoughts

against the odds of amnesia

out of the gloomy dusk

in the back of my mind,

into the blinding circuits of neural cities

This house is a dark face

right in the face of the night,

blasted with icy sleet

in a long, howling incantation

The body lies lapping, wooshed,

ring annualed

on gravity waves

until diluted into insubstantiality

in wake of wandering vacuums

The house stands erect,

keeping vigilant watch

with its hall lamp

up at the end of the alley

Only Jalal al-din Rumi's poetry

enjoys unrestrained access;

all his poetry collections

equipped with their own keys

and a private box

inside my cranium's Gaudistic theatre

Bob Dylan is referred overnight

to his owl nest

in an old birch tree way down in the alley,

just this side of the locked mailboxes

down by the country road