STEVE NOYES

Earth

At a southern bend in the Red River, 
ice-grip to break-up, the riverbank lost inches

of undermined, eroded clay, making a lip,
tree-roots dangling below the cliff-top.

A weathered house, someone’s property,
sat unabandoned on the promontory.

Every morning a man left the house,
started his car, as dirt rained on the shore.

A snake-fence peered over the edge, until it didn’t. 
They replaced it with a chain-link box that kept 

the kids in eyeshot. The garden shed slumped, clung, 
plummeted, a jumble of shards. Birch and poplar 

bowed, dove, and swivelled downstream, 
to wash up in a crazy spray of roots.

“Insane,” we said. “Why those folks
don’t sell, or move, for God’s sake.”

The far pole of the laundry line bent 
its doppelganger, snapped the line,		

dragged clothes over the edge: damp flotsam,
licked by the river to a sodden clump.

The owners petitioned the powers-that-be 
for compensation, pleading taxpayer rights,

while the city posited an act of God.
An inadequate sum to transport the structure

was offered and refused. Down below
islets of fallen earth sprouted vetch.

“Why don’t they do something?” 
 “If we were them, we’d act.” 

We wouldn’t just lay there expecting 
the creak, the load-shrugging crunch	

as all gave way. Splayed studs, crumpled roof, 
the cubes of rooms become explicit;

beams and bathtubs smacking their shapes
into the raddled clay shore. Preternaturally afraid, 

we stayed awake in our own dark homes,
touching the furniture to find our way,

dialling our neighbours. “They’re still perched there.”
“I suppose they’re not going to do anything.”

“No. They’re not going to do anything at all.”