Nobody's Home

All winter, these tangled canes
were silver-thorned and vicious to the root. 
But now, bearing black fruit,
they deepen, blush, and thrive 
in high, unruly lanes, 
annihilating where they grow
the fenceposts and corroded chicken wire 
of some forgotten boundary line.
The Cascade air is dry and tossed with pine, 
but in the pure sun
these thickets smell like wine, 
a heady, tannin atmosphere.
This late, the river mostly runs
on ghosts of melted mountain snows. 
The water winks and glisters as it goes.
I can understand
why one would build his cabin here, 
though now the mossy roof is caving in. 
Two socket-hollow windows stare.
The plywood walls are warped and mushroom-gray. 
Above what used to be a door,
“Nobody’s Home,” soft, sunken letters say.