My House And It's Architecture And I; A Eulogy And Ramble Poem by Katherine Tylor McCall

We had no choice but to sell the house,
Well, the land on which it sits at least.

Our huge wooded lot a fool might accuse us of wasting-
With our narrow, arrow of a house,
Frozen and grounded.
With his horizontal lines and stoic concrete foundation,
His row of proudly marching windows who each hold aloft and angle sunward-
-three feet of eager and impatient roof o'erstepping solid walls,
Like pikes that jut afore some battles front-line long ago-
aloft held by men already gone.
Victorious in death like all things.

Oh, horizontal line-
You play coy on flat surfaces,
Looking dull and sere,
So flat,
But realize your three dimensions and see what magnificence is there!
Slashing rooftop salutations to the sun you give without moving,
Flat-black and smooth, a single unbroken sheet to canvass all your surface planes-
thick and soft when warm,
Your membrane played some distant planets blighted surface on many-
summers past.


The concrete slab far below us seems cool and wise-
like some clay deposit, or a Jazz musician.
Set solid and strong,
Embeded deep within the earth like some old god.
10,000 years forgotten in this last remaining piece-
of some massive and ancient forest,
Thick and random out of spite along her edges,
A leafy canopy shades all but dancing, dappled spots of gold,
Some flit accross our grey shock of a house,
Who like a metal spear pierces deep within the myriad green-
narrow, low, and humble,
Built in deference to the wood,
Not over or through it but almost...
-among it, a part of.

From far enough away it would perhaps,
Appear to be a blunted shelf of slate;

Old as time and rooted in the mantle of the earth,

As oceans, deserts, and tall forests rise and fall around it,

And it's jaggedness sloughs off as edges smooth away,

And lichens fill it's crags with emerald-yellows,

This was our house in eons past but for a flash-
reborn concrete, wood, and glass for us to live within.
He will again be in the earth though at times he might in fondness recall,
The feet-thick concrete slab run through with bloodless veins of piping-
on which he rested,
Meant to heat the floor from within and under that
Soil, sediments, and clay and 'neath that as well;
A great underground river do I see-

In fantasy or dream, a memory in which someone told me this?
Did the Buckthorn at the front;
Kind 'Fluttersparkle' whisper it to me-
as psylocibin dropped my mind beneath my feet,
Deep into the earth,
Among the oak-roots, and the Indian bones,
Perhaps a subterranean stream, walled all in sulfur and in flowstone,
Where water cold as ice and just as clear flows undisturbed,
Or perhaps not.

The forest loves our house,
Embracing it in leafy arms and shade,
Like an Algonquin Longhouse, not a log cabin or brick tower-
sturdy, yet in-permanent much like the people who raise them up,
Mimicing the landscape,
So does our grey and modern house.

Excepting the large bright-red front door that I do not understand,
And therefore resent, no matter how well it photographs.

A friend once told me the ancient Hebrews painted their doors red with ox-blood,
So that the Angel of Death would pass over their home.
I told him none of those Hebrews had a Keck & Keck house,
And with a family of 17, that Hebrew might risk one for architectural integrity;
One of few concepts worth life and death to me.
Which most think is either joke, or proof that I'm out of my mind;
I assure them it's no joke and I'm quite serious,
As for being out of my mind, well-
that's between me and my mind.


I would indeed die for architecture sake but as it's so unlikely,
I'm afraid it's not nearly as heroic as it sounds;
If a madman wires me to a Mies Van der Rohe and says 'Choose! ';
I'm not hesitating,
Detonate that motherlicker, while I die with purpose,
Same goes for any structure I feel inspires greatness,
Not that it's likely I'll be the target of architerrorism anyway-

-pity, it would be a grand way to go.