I lie awake in the wooden room
I have constructed in the woods
dreaming of pretty things.

Knots like ochre eyes stare down from the oak wood panelling.
Outside, the wind brushes up against the fogged glass
laid into the side of my house,
a feeble proxy to the coyotes song
rippling through the ballooning darkness.

I built this home, all 275 square feet,
lugging tools and supplies through the barren acres.
I laid each brick into the fat black earth
preparing the foundation,
laying my life into it
nailing each board around me.

When spring rolled in the trilliums poked
through the earth to admire the commotion.
Later came their friends: the mountain-pride, 
buttercups and harlequin lupine.

In my dreams, the lupine could become a cloak of royal silk
wrapped around me,
the King.

Golden ore and stalks of silver
poking through the earth
where trilliums once grew.

That night I dreamt of pretty things
Shiny things still blotched my vision in those days.
I didn’t yet have a roof to stare at
late into the night, and the stars
burned through the treetops and into my
dreams.


Daylight was for building.
Laying the hatchet into wood
driving wood into frames,
with little metal nails from the hardware store
many acres away

Where men bought sidings and rope
for homes with Ikea furniture,
their wives wearing sapphire rings
and golden hoops
and all the pretty little things
I dreamt about out here,
in the forest.

Here, where sun cascades
through my windows in the early dawn.
So I close my eyes, and
decorate the silence with dreams
of pretty, pretty things.