Hayden Saunier

Autumn Work Song

Faint music outside, as if the Mennonite
congregation three hills away 

has taken up Gregorian chants, but today’s
a workday and the song’s nearby, 

low baritone notes swayed alive
in the tall purple spikes 

of late-blooming sage, so I know
it’s the plainsong of bees 

who’ve learned to glean sweetness
wherever, whenever, it’s found, 

from each bell and throat,
who know how to carry it home over hills, 

make late honey for others, because
even this close to the end, there is time.

I Was the House

I saw the storm come on.
I held each window’s shiny eye in place.
I rattled.
I was casing, frame, and sash.
I was shutters pinned back against planks
by twists and knots of iron hammered into flat black leaves.
I was door hinge, nail-in-the-jamb, the screw’s tight augur
teaching the integrity of yellow pine.
I was amber sap squeezed
from the knotholes’ tiny galaxies
ghost eyes in the floorboards.
I was post and beam, mortise and tenon,
tongue and groove.
I was the whole construction built on friction’s bite.
All night, I knocked and shook against my sides.
I creaked and whistled.
My eaves and attic spaces howled.
I was the house.
I was stone and hardwood, brace and weld.
All night, the wind unhinged me.
And I held.

Back to Issue XIV…