The House that Rocked
  By Barbara Robidoux

We never lock the door of the old house.
Just a hook and eye to keep out the wind.

We hauled four granite cornerstones
built the house on top.
A house without a cellar
moving with the earth,
heaving with winter freeze
shrinking with spring thaw.

We heat by a wood cookstove I bought for $35.
Feed it alder and pine wood to bake biscuits and beans.
Ash and maple for slower heat through the cold nights.
The stove sings and sizzles all through winter.

The kitchen always smells of fried onions and deer meat.
A round oak table to eat on, long nights of card games.
We tell stories around it by kerosene light in winter.
Songs live in the walls: pipe songs, morning songs
Grandma’s drum songs.
A cane-seated rocking chair shuffles around as needed.

Outside the door
we dip water from a spring-fed well.
Break ice foot deep in winter with a long ash pole.
Lift water in a tin pail to wash and cook and drink.

Upstairs a south-facing bed built with cedar logs.
Birth and death live between the sheets.
Our house, our cradle, rocks with the wind,
held together by spirits too stubborn to move.