Music House

After an unthinkable calamity befell him
the forest closed in.
Animals stared through his windows.
Turkey, woodchuck, raccoon, squirrels, deer.
A bear.

To avoid their black-eyed gaze
he shifted every inside wall.
He spread the hidden space—
the house's vacant shell.
He boxed the windows,
made a hatch,
installed a ladder.
His headlamp darted
as he scrambled up and down.

Between the walls he wired a squad of speakers
to fill the place with Berlioz and Bach
On the outside of the inner wall
he penciled a chronology of fire, fuel, physics—
a labyrinth in cursive,
vine-like strands of science,
weapons, transportation.

His branching maze of technological advance
reached the time in which he wrote
and proceeded on past digital
into a holographic future he foresaw
in which meaning is set down in patterns
like vast arrays of crescent shadows on a pebble beach
or galaxies of stars.


As music floated that idea
he painted, on the inner surface of the outer wall,
hungry people at an endless table—
it went all around the house and joined itself.
His characters compared their histories of love—
the strongest agitations of their hearts
                crushes and rejections,
                lust and fear.
He drew, year after year,
gestures and expressions
and laid on color
until, somehow, he found his labor done.

He returned the inner walls to their original positions.
He looked out his windows
                addressed the animals
                repelled the forest
                invited visitors
                listened to them talk
                listened to music
                listened to rain.
As visitors talked, he watched and listened.


-Ron McAdow