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Our Half-Finished House John Lane
More statement than investment, more Frank Lloyd Wright Than Martha Stewart, we dreamed it mostly glass and abstract comforts. No lawn, we left the lot lousy with underbrush and saplings most would cut and haul away. The driveway’s downslope turn hides our angular gray ghost-- a modern gesture emerging from that wooded space. We invest in photosynthesis. Our return, pawpaws by the creek, the sweep of swamp oaks rising. *** Place: this slab of concrete, no foundation, feature wall rising for no clear utility. Instead, our defining gesture, a very-real wood-framed forest filling every window. *** It’s on the hardwood hillside where the outside wall now stands that we found past evidence of occupation: small fractured atlatal point. Around it lay scattered quartz chips, the refuse pit for Archaic Period labor. I picked it up, pocketed it, talisman securing our continued settlement. *** A ruined river road forms our southern property line, risks flood when the Lawson’s Fork rises. Yesterday walking down slope, I slipped off my shoes and waded the orphan current, glimpsed upstream a flowing, a future, and the run-off moving through. |
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