To get there, you need a jeep or good hiking shoes
for the road is winding, pitted, and steep.
Trees tower overhead, and the sun winks through them,
dappling the ground.  Neither flowers nor grass
grow within the shadows.  Leftover leaves compose
the forest's carpet, merged with the wrappings
of forgotten picnics, long ago rendezvous.
Abandoned deer runs crisscross the woodland.
Scarred hills bow to brown water.  Fish swim with beer cans
in the shallows, their tails rippling the muck.
Half-submerged in the bank lays the tire once used
to swing or dive from until its rope broke.
The bank is battered by decades of feet playing
hooky from school.  Far from the road in a clearing
cut just for it, the house stands in silence.
It is built of shingled wood, unpainted and dried
to a soft gray.  A yard encompasses
the house, the outhouse, and a lopsided woodshed.
To one side, a car lists in ruts of mud.
Under a tree, a box of old bottles, some whole,
some not, shimmers in the grass.  The house leans
on an outdoor stairway leading to the attic.
From unscreened windows, tongues of curtains pant
in the heat.  The porch is shady and uneven,
and the boards creak with any shift in weight.
It's lined with chairs in various states of repair.
Near the door is a wooden ice cream churn.
A spider lives in it.