The House

                                                            by Dianna MacKinnon Henning

was woven with sweet cedar; its metal

roof pinged in the rain. A wide

field of windows, their window-boxes

pulsated with red geraniums. There

were oaks and digger pines.

There were coyotes that howled.

There was a pond wide as a lake. There

was a sense of other beings. A woman

and a man called their place Little

Clear Creek. They planted apple 

trees named for their children. Each

evening they walked to the pond. Snow

geese with black tipped wings

lifted off the water. The man held his

wife’s hand. Their eyes said they were

eternal. But houses are sometimes

astute scholars who study their people

with avid attention. He began to work late

at the office. She grew restless and remote.

When the people broke, the house, too.

The couple left separately, the pebble

path scattered. Geraniums died. Cedar

siding turned a dismal gray. Other

beings shook their heads in dismay, and

hesitated to enter the abandoned home.

But what was built into the walls’ continued,

their best moments, swells of laughter,

such as when they first met apple picking.

* * * * *

"The House" was first published in Blue Fifth Review.

Dianna MacKinnon Henning has work published in The Moth, Ireland; Sukoon, Volume 5; Mojave River Review; The New Verse News; Hawaii Pacific Review; Sequestrum; South Dakota Review; Naugatuck River Review; Lullwater Review; The Kentucky Review; Blue Fifth Review; The Main Street Rag; Clackamas Literary Review; 22 wagons by Danijela Trajković, Istok Akademia, an anthology of contemporary Anglophone poetry; California Quarterly; Poetry International and Fugue. Three-time Pushcart nominee. New work due out 2019 in New American Writing, The Kerf. Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several CAC grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program. Henning’s third poetry book Cathedral of the Hand was published 2016 by Finishing Line Press.