The Hermit's House

 

by Brett Rutherford

So he has raised himself a house—

a squat and brooding carpenter it was

who strung these clapboards in their gambreled

eaves! The twisted spines of elder trees

lean on its walls suggestively, a clutch

of branches fit to snap the heads of birds—

whatever the month they issue the brittleness

of dried-up leaves, to somersault

the wagon-rutted walk, and pile

in bottomless heaps on his untended

lawn. That the gate remains open

is not so much a mark of tenancy

as hingeless ruin, and though

a charcoal breath and sputterings

emerge at the chimney top,

the lampless porch and broken steps

alike suggest abandonment. But here,

thrown up in rustless height to a slit

of reluctant sun, the postman’s box

opens its mouth at the haunted edge,

spells out his name, encourages messages,

a beacon of normalcy at Usher’s door,

beyond whose mundane purpose his house

broods low like a gorged and sleeping owl.

It is only a house among houses,

a curious blotch on a cheery Victorian street.

 

There is no tarn, no hound,

no family crypt,

and yet these swollen clapboards tell

of darker dreams in eldritch books within.

The panes admit no sunlight, I see,

but the moon and the Pole Star’s rays

beam down through cobwebbed corridors.

One window’s barred, the room beyond

an empty blackness, a hermit cell

whose necromantic occupant

has razored off his eyelids

to watch in perpetual wakefulness

for those who will come from the outer orbs,

streaming down ravenous to slay and feed

on all that lives — save him alone.

 

When all this happens, he plans to serve

narcotic tea and delicate pastries

to the arrived new gods. Amid the nods

and smiles, some wry jest he offers up

will prompt a water of eye, a clap

of one tentacle against another,

and he will take his place among them.