One of my many pecu­liar­i­ties is a fas­ci­na­tion with desert­ed places, espe­cial­ly old hous­es, and I’ve writ­ten far too many poems about them. But that does­n’t mean that I don’t love it when oth­ers take on their own depic­tions. This poem by Richard Jar­rette, a Cal­i­forn­ian, takes on not only the descrip­tion of an old house, but what might have hap­pened there and what might hap­pen any­where. It’s from his book The Beat­i­tudes of Eka­te­ri­na, from Green Writ­ers Press of Brat­tle­boro, Vermont.