"The Vanished House": A Poem

So already,  I first met Margaret Atwood's poem "Shapechangers in Winter" last year around the time of the winter solstice, and I actually wrote about it in  a blog I posted on New Year's Eve day 2021. 

I thought of that poem today as I listened to the Broad Cove Chorale, the Hingham-based women's choral group I sang with before the COVID19 pandemic. Among the pieces they sang in their holiday concert were musical settings of poems by Christina Rossetti, William Blake, and Robert Lowell.

Thinking of all of these poems reminded me that last December, I wrote a poem in gratitude to three winter poets: Margaret Atwood, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Frost. 

The image* that most inspired it was that of the vanished house in the third section of Atwood's poem. Musing on it, I had recalled Wallace Stevens' poem "The Snow Man," which added to the haunting idea and image collection I was beginning to build. 

Sensing a need to pin my gathering impressions and ideas to something familiar, something already in my bones, I thought of a Robert Frost poem that I think you'll be able to identify without my revealing its name. It's one of those "great American poems"  that so many of us encountered as middle school or high school students learning to read and hopefully love poetry. It may be the poem's meter and rhyme scheme that most help you identify the Frost poem, so let its music wash over you or carry you. 

So here it is: my very allusive poem, "The Vanished House."  

 

The man who owned these woods, it’s said, 

Lived on this spot, but now is dead. 

The village folk, they think it queer  

That his fine house should disappear. 

 

But others theorize otherwise, 

Themselves compelled by winter skies 

When snow and evening jointly fall 

Erasing home, erasing all.  

 

In a state of winter mind, 

They think he left his house behind, 

Found a strong will buried deep, 

A promise to himself to keep. 

 

And when he from that house self-banished-- 

That was when it up and vanished. 

The neighbor’s mare, who must have seen,

Shook her bells once and stayed serene. 

 

A vanished house no secrets keeps,

No view obscures of woodland deeps, 

No varnished truths perpetuates-- 

So, over time, it liberates.

 

It let him choose fresh-fallen snow,

A wood instead of house to go. 

And now, he breathes the cold in deep 

And smiles inside, and wants no sleep.  

                     

In town the neighbors still seek clues--

They stare at wood chips, frosted screws--

And looking back, and at, and near,

See not the house set to appear.

* Adjacent photo is a screenshot of Pixneo photo:https://pixnio.com/nature-landscapes/winter/forest-snow-winter-wood-tree-frost-cold-landscape-branch