Island Summer House (poem by Cynthia Ciani Anderson, style: folk)

Island Summer House (poem by Cynthia Ciani Anderson, style: folk)
We know the name of the lobsterman
who built the house seventy years ago,
with lumber from Doug Young's mill,
bricks and windows a century old
salvaged from Franklin Island.
He lived there with his wife three summers,
fished, worked at the sardine plant.
The house fourteen by twenty feet,
long axis north-south,
one room up, one room down,
one door west, one door east.
A sixteen-inch square chimney
free-standing like a tree, a bit off-center,
flue thimbles north and south
for parlor and cook stove.
Exposed studs, joists, rafters, collar ties,
aged to a palette of rich browns,
hold nails and hooks for useful objects,
shelves for a small library.
Upstairs, the gambrel roof frame
sits atop a knee wall, like a tent,
or an overturned boat hull,
a Noah's ark, sheltering the beds below.
After twenty years we added skylights,
one on each steep roof side.
Now upstairs and down have
water views and sun on four sides.
I go to sleep, North Star by my side,
watch the sun rise at the mouth of the river
through the window at my feet,
hear the tide rise and fall on the rocks.