THe wish for a country place can lead to folly.
The man placed this one on the market, after neglecting
basic maintenance for twenty-one years, and I
was the first to come along and take him seriously.
The sills are gone from dry rot, and the window frames
are cracked and full of bugs. Glass is falling
everywhere, and the ceilings are all drunk
with the evil wine of mildew-spores and rain.
His well is downhill from the house, and calls
the septic system friend and closest neighbor.
Beyond the well, blackberries guard the treasures --
broken washing machines and ancient radio sets.

There was anger in the house, for the door frame
of each of the bedrooms has been split: privacy
yielding to boot and shoulder. One of the young ones,
despairing, wrote on the wall: "Either there is something
wrong with the system, or with the way it is being applied."
Another, in tiny scratches on the window sill,
escaped another way: "I love God."
Every surface in the building bore the marks
of violence and of forgotten cigarettes.

We entered in a storm of wind and lightning, and the lights
would not answer to our tired hands, fumbling switches.
We shuffled about with buckets, chasing, in the darkness,
drips and the sounds of drips. We, the parents, briefly
ran mad with the foolishness of our choices,
and the children, without direction, formed their own
work party, unloading the truck by flashlight and storm-light.

We gathered our strength with the gathering of fuel,
and sat by firelight together. Boxes of books
filled the shadows; in one, we found a brief tale
of a boy who made nails at a forge for his father,
and used them in roofing the barn by moonlight,
man and man together, one thirteen, one older.
By reading this story aloud, we filled the darkness
with caring, and took possession of the listening walls.

As the weather cleared, fall already arrived, I borrowed
a ladder and assessed the roof: so much worse
it looked to me now it was mine, than when the agent
stood smiling and talking potential. Shakes could be seen
Through two layers of three-tab and mosses, and the gutters
seemed as if blown out with bird shot. I then took
two weeks of vacation: tore off, and carried, and hammered,
with the oldest child, from dark to dark, sweat dripping.
We flashed the old chimneys, and standpipes, and cut capping,
and rested, watching the change of day on the mountains,
and the play of leaf-light on the oak trees.

Roof tight, there was time to examine the acre of soil
on which we would raise our foodstuffs. Small stones
lay on each of the gardens. The man who had been here
had built no soil, and his gardens laid bare many stones.
He gathered the stones in wire netting, and piled them,
but more came up in each springtime, like flowers.
He threw them in the bed of the dry wash, and into
the ever-increasing blackberries, and into low places,
yet they grew into multitudes. The man farmed stones
better than anything else he did. They called to him
at night, I think, and disturbed his rest.
Now it is winter, and I lie by my wife and dream
of the thousand-odd things that must quickly be done.
The rain, at least, runs softly away from the walls,
and the children are warm and are dry. I dream of the need
for a name for our strange new home, and my dream
smiles as it names the place: Stony Run.