Our house was the first,
floating free of its footing,
moving away from the path leading
through the pasture where we would pass
the fly-swarmed dead horse,
fascinated.
I think I was fond of someone next door,
but I don’t remember.
Was it here that I first met
my father, home from Okinawa?
He had a magnificent flat-top crew cut.
They repaired our house.
But it was on the San Andreas Fault
and so other houses crawled,
or the cracks in bedroom walls
were so great the outside would be
more visible than proper,
and we all moved away.
When we returned, visiting,
the homes were used to shelter livestock.