Vox Populi
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Michael Simms: House
You want to lie down in the lost field
of your courage and sleep
beside the blurred road of snow
But a lamp is waiting in the window
The house looks out through the keyhole
it is warm
children sleeping in their nests
Here in the heart of the circle
a woman playing guitar
turns you inside out
like a glove
Here is like a dark summer
Outside the night is smooth black water
the entire universe
a constellation of houses in the hills
You among those
who have built
stone on stone
a house in the wind
Copyright Michael Simms. From Nightjar (Ragged Sky, 2021).
Michael Simms is a poet, a novelist and the founding editor of Vox Populi. His recent books include The Green Mage, Volume 1 of the Talon Trilogy (Madville, 2023).
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“turns you inside out/like a glove”–that’s what music does, and the music of words, too…a guitar in proper hands.
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Thanks, Adam!
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happy to read your work and connect here!
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Oh, I enjoyed this poem, Michael. “Stone on stone” so close to me. Hard rain here, & this poems gathers in.
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Thanks, Jerry!
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True poetry.
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Thank you!
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Beautiful winter poem. I say this in my warm house. Lucky me.
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Yes, lucky me too.
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I did not know it was a poem of a previous collection. It seemed brand new to me. Reminding me somehow and with no obvious connection of Vladimir Mayakovsky . Probably because I am obsessed with Russian Literature and everything good, recalling at one my past and young memory.
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Thank you, Saleh. This poem was important to me because it captured the feeling I had of the home my wife and I were building as a defense against the unfriendly world.
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Such gorgeous invention, Michael–I adore this poem.
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Thank you, Michelle. I love your work as well.
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It is your life’s work, Michael, your poetry that builds, “stone on stone/ a house in the wind.” And we, too, are turned “inside out/ like a glove” by what you’ve made.
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Thank you, Louise. Praise from you is like spun gold. I admire your work so much.
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Love this Michael! I see out a different window, look in a different door and leave behind an unmade bed every reading.
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Thanks, Sean!
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Still beautiful. Hits very much home for me. Thanks.
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Thanks, Syd!
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You say the poem is so spare , but to me it feels rich in the night of smooth black water and the woman playing the guitar and you place us perfectly in the lost field of your courage. Thank you.
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Thanks, Barbara. I feel I stripped the poem down to the barest minimum, so I’m glad to hear you call it “rich.”
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A voice so ardent, a poem so full of a trusting concision, the images all so lucid, and phrases like: “the lost field/of your courage” or ” a woman playing guitar/ turns you inside out/like a glove” or ” the night is smooth black water/the entire universe/a constellation of houses in the hills. Then that last quatrain! Oh, my. That poem is so spare, and so full! It is all I love, and all I needed to read this on rainy dawn…
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Since you are the master craftsperson of concision, Laure-Anne, your praise means everything to me.
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Beautiful update on Frost’s snow/road/traveler poem(s)! His are of a different time in rhyme and form, but you inform each other, and I think he would agree that your keyhole, constellation, and inside-out glove lines take us out of the woods and into the warm place he was looking for. Those images will stay with me. Thank you!
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Oh my, Jane. I’m so honored that you see a connection between Frost’s poem and mine. Thank you!
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Reading this in the morning dark. It’s wonderful! I love what you do with the images, magical and entirely emotionally true.
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Thank you, Maura. The poem is so spare, I didn’t know if the feelings came through. I’m glad they did and grateful to you for saying so.
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Feelings come in waves for every verse written. Thank You.
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Thank you, Marina.
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