Tiny House
North wind’s sizing up the house
like a boxer his opponent,
throwing an experimental jab or two
before the real buffeting begins.
No use trying to sleep.
The Hunter Moon cruised off early
to low-ride that pocked face over some other boulevard.
Yesterday, Delaware friends called to say
a King tide is slapping their front steps about
and still rising.
On the news came images from Cassini,
now slung out past Saturn stately in her necklaces of mixed metal,
inner planets glimpsed behind her,
small kerosene lanterns in ragged procession through the dark.
There’s ours in the photograph (arrow provided).
A Tiny House on the right.
Just one room here.
One small room for that great eddy
of ten million flip-flops and bleach bottles.
A spark from our clumsy wiring can torch the place
any instant.
Old blueprints do not pertain.
The icebox is bleeding out over the floor
and we hoarders argue about the thermostat.
Sunrise, sunset, we’re at it.
The hazard lights go on, smell of smoke
and these four tiny walls vibrate like a frightened cat.
About the Author
Jennifer M Phillips is a bi-national immigrant, painter, gardener, Bonsai-grower. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). A poem is like a little brass pan to carry fire’s coals through the winter weather, and so she writes.
