I was thinking, while I was working on my income tax,
here in the open angle of a V -- 
that blue on the map that's water -- my house
tucked into the fold of a hill, on the edge
of a ragged beak of the sea
that widens and narrows according to the tide:
"This little house will be swallowed some year.
Not yet. But threatened."

Chips are houses, twigs are trees
on the woodland ledges along the lip,
the blue throat open, thirsty.  Where my chip-roof sits,
sandland loosens, boulders shift downslope,
bared roots of old trunks stumble.
The undermining and undulating lurch
is all one way, the shore dragged south
to spill into and fill another mouth.

I was thinking while I was working: "The April sun
is warm."  Suddenly, all the twigs on the privet
budded green, the cardinal flamed and called,
the maple rained its flowerets down 
and spread leaf-grown.  July's plush roses bloomed,
were blown.  A hundred gladioli sunsets in a row
raced to die, and dyed the cove, 
while the sea crawled the sand, gnawed on the cliff.

And leisurely, cracks in the flagstones happened,
leaks in the roof.  The gateposts crumbled,
mortar in the stone wall loosened,
boards in porch let the nailheads through.
I was thinking, while April's crocus
poked out of earth on the cesspool top:
"Blueblack winter of water coming -- icewhite, rockhard
tide will be pounding the side of the gaping V..."

"But smell the windfresh, salty morning,
flash of the sunwhipped beak of the sea!
Better get last year's layers of old leaves up,
before this year's green bursts out, turns brown,
comes blowing down,"  I was thinking 
while I was working on my income tax.


 =Tansy Mattingly