a wasp has rolled into a ball.
It gathers it from the edge 
of a small pond my son made 
one summer by standing in it 
and digging out rocks as heavy as him with a pick axe.
It rolls it into a perfect tan sphere
and hauls it away with wings suddenly like blades
 of a heavy-lift Sikorsky.

And continues in a house of mud -
walls, roof, frames, and front door of mud.
To enter
someone recedes to nothing
to pass through the door.

The house is one with a cliff of mud.
Above it, a canoe of mud drifts through the air.
It took all we had to fashion it
so that our children, 
a boy and girl at three or four,
could sit at the prow
and wonder at the world.


			Brandywine
			8/3/98