© Chip Dameron

Visit to Wolf House

Despite posted warnings, no rattlesnakes
sine waved across the dirt path leading
to Jack London's folly, stones stacked
around imagined rooms, a glorious ruin
with a weed-choked reflecting pool
in a dry country far from the wet gums
of the sea. The real story of the walk
on the way in was the woman coming
down a hill alongside her two kids
and mother, grinning in the sunlight,
stabbing the earth with her walking stick
as she flung a leg up and out and down,
bound to finish the mile-and-a-half round trip
to the house and grave, her palsy no bar
to her joy and the day of her joy.