when

we lived in the woods and the baby was a baby

the three of us

plus a cat and blackish dog stayed

Together in a shack bigger

than a refrigerator box; at dusk we lit lamps,

breakfast lunch and dinner cooked on a wood stove.

Rolled cigarettes with one hand and

Smoked looking out at silver birch trees

and three abandoned pickup trucks.

No telephone no electric

no lights in the distance, the air smelled

of wood smoke and kerosene and brown rice.