Argos MacCallum and Kell

25 Saltbush Road

for Argos

I have a friend who built a house
for me to stay – when those cold knives
of winter drove me to concrete and steel as
a bitter blanket to wrap around
weary bones and wounded dreams.
It is, he says, (for he knows how
to measure wood and bales of straw)
ten by twelve, no Hilton, but you
can spend the winter here without
some landlord telling you to go
before checkout time.
Tacks and staples, screwguns
and nails, what love is, can be
measured in the stars – ah well
the chickens may roost here tomorrow
but now – its made of love
and houses made of love can never fall
unless you let them – houses made of
love – Refugee Ridge
and Saltbush Road and
a river of silence to the moon
and back to tide pools where life stirs –
until the dark like some dull hammer
drives us down into that spinning wonder.