Two Poems by Allan Peterson

House

House says it can see two trees twice

in the double pane windows and inside people

asleep under woven ghosts and throws

Every window frames a photograph

When phoebes moved into the bare branches           

pictures improved and deer like soft gloves

entered the compositions

House dreamed of bats to give away

from its eaves at night shedding mystery

but bees had a singular industry

House welcomed their gilded pavilions

and turned to syrup in the pool

At the smoke alarm house goes hollow

the shriek of it through the windows

for a moment surpassing the furniture

curtains and family photographs aghast

House thinks on its origins a roof

a simple plane leaned against a hill

sticks layered with pine boughs

surrounded by the future a fence

that held back nothing

Diffusionism

Snow on the ocean is a pale dream
ice blues you think of when the edges
of oat grass are curling under with heat
I can see it even having never seen it
I know it the way I know seeing
a bronze Shang ding that China arrived
before history and became northwest tribes
whose faces in art unfolded the same way
an orca was opened or a sea bird spread               
so they would know the same dream as fact
where the sky turns to powder and blades