While building the larger house, he lived a very simple life
in the smaller house he’d built before, the house without
water or power, the 12 x 20 foot house with three windows,
a single bed, a chair, the house whose thousand books lined
the walls, including some he’d written in the house, written
by window light or the Coleman lantern he’d charge
each day at the hot-springs pool where he swam
every morning, and now that he lived in the larger house
with every convenience, he missed living in the smaller
house with none, where sometimes he’d lean against a window
at dusk just to finish a line, and where once, in the dark, he wrote
in pencil a dream on the wall, then went back to sleep.