Vernacular Architecture

What could be more basic
than this outhouse with no door,

a bag of lime anchoring the floor
and a roll of spongy toilet paper

propped in the driest corner
of a bench with a single hole.

Bleached catalogues hunch in a mound,
too warped to thumb through.

I could aim my reverie at the view
of green bumping hills,

but more absorbing are the mud daubers
that stucco the splintery wall

with stacked chevrons
for their eggs to hatch in,

bodies vibrating, pressing bits of dirt
with their mandibles,

builders working in a brown medium
like Petra’s carvers,

molding pipes of clay—frieze-frilled caves
to hold the fruit of their intimacies.