Garden Studio plans available. Click here.

Shack Medicine

      For Dan’l Stokely

The river glides in silence.
The night is deep, like a
  loving mother.

A silence goes back and forth
  through the marsh.

The same silence that was here
in my shack waiting for me.
  It was always here.

I was gone so long, now
the silence is so much deeper, and
  I sink down into it.

The sadness I met in the world
  falls away from me.
One by one my dreams return.

            *

Everything good I put into my house
  is here
  living in the silence.

Boards placed a certain way.
A window facing the moon.
A straight-back chair at the table.
Gifts received, and
  pottery bowls and cups
  I made with my own hands.
Things crude and useful that began
  from enthusiasm
  and keep that life
  and give it back.
Talismans and pieces of string.

            *

In the night silence
my house speaks to me.

It leaves me alone
a long time, but
then it reaches out.

A gentle hand penetrates my body.
Through the flesh
it reaches in, and on one rib
below my heart leaves hanging
  a small silver box
  with all my good dreams
  inside it.

“Nothing can ever
be taken from you
now.”

(Robert Sund, from, Poems From Ish River Country, 2005,
Shoemaker and Hoard Press)

Robert Sund's Poets House: www.poetshousetrust.org