Heather Saunders Estes

It was the unusual sounds that caught my attention and sent me to the window, then outside to look. It was rather like the way the unmistakable noise of a chainsaw calls me to watch. There is inevitability to this destruction, making way for something new, maybe better.

I Would Have Used Those Cedar Boards

Clamorous crunching fills the air.
I rush to the window
to see a greedy yellow T Rex
with caterpillar trax legs and metal jaws,
munching on the house across the street.

We don’t often think of the life cycles of houses
as they tend to outlast us.
However, this one is suddenly and irrevocably dying.
Being torn apart, crushed and rolled flat.
The quiet of the neighborhood, shattered.

Tinny sounds of metal siding breaking,
roof tearing, the huge creature drops the remnants
with a crash.
Teeth chew through floors and pink bedroom walls.
The whole head shoves into an open room,
with a hollow boom it breaks through the ceiling
into the attic.
A brick chimney tumbles in slow motion.
Insulation sifts down like snow.

It growls again and again as it downshifts.
Jaws unhinge like a cobra.
The massive mouth full, it shakes its head side-to-side,
a shark worrying a carcass,
or Komodo dragon ripping apart a helpless goat.

Another smash and a walk-in closet
opens like a hazelnut in a nutcracker.
Beautiful cedar siding revealed –
squashed under with a chug and rev,
trax forward like standing on tip toe.

Workers spray the carnage with a water hose
to keep dust down as cars inch by on the street.
Drivers rubbernecking
as if ogling a multiple car crash, with injuries.

The death of this house is not even dignified
by urban recyclers gleaning windows,
doors knobs and wooden parquet.
No ex-residents present to thank their home
and witness its passing,
only this poem, written with respect.