Down there I pointed
to the bottom of the trail winding
in gentle curves to the left then
right then left again down salmonberry
covered slope
the appraiser’s camera shuttered
in her delicate hands capturing
a glimpse through leafless late fall
stalks, the southeast corner
of the yabyum shack,
the home for poems
later, reading the thick pages
of the legal document used to wrangle
a refinance out a lender’s fist
the caption read
‘5240 N. Douglas; boathouse’
winter storms and high tides carried
the mostly sunken skiff close
enough to the shack to justify wrestling
the 35 horse outboard off the stern through
beach rye crisp and fragile with frost
up the trail to the shack where I leaned
the oily smelling seahorse against the wall
a return of two-cycle ghosts
to the shack where poems are at home
in a house built for boats
i didn’t know how to tell
her it wasn’t a boathouse
anymore
Jonas Lamb 