Home Sweet Home

The abandoned house

Sits in the lap of the hill

Staring at the highway

Watching cars go by

Waiting for someone to come home

Old stands of dried strands

Of Johnson’s grass and broken glass

Poke up from under

A loose collar of red dirt

Where children played

A farmer’s shirt that frames

A scorched and frayed porch

That the weather disdained and displaced

Left pitched and splayed

On the face of the house

And somehow it stayed

No tears here

Just wood wet with dew

The mindless wind

Flutters shattered shutters

Unhinged spectacles knocked askew

A bit battered

By the last batch of boarders

Why would they trade

Glass for plywood?

This old home yearns for more abuse

This old hearth burns for sooty use

This old roof of charred spars is proof

This old house did not stand aloof

There was a time

Those children grew here

Life was new here

Flowers up the spindle climbed

Heels tapped to familiar tunes

Harmony rang in the rafters

Hands clapped with Aunt Emily’s spoons

The front room sang family songs

In symphony with the laughter

Whenever the family gathered

Now, the unison moon is undone

The timbre and tones in the beams

Strain to sing hymns for no one

The garden outside is long gone

The rest of the yard and the lawn dried

Soon after the girls and boys left home

To follow their dreams

What used to be music in the eaves

Restrains to abide in the vesper

When the spawn leaves the nest

It’s just noise that reversed

To hide in the hollow forest

The joys that once lived here have died

This old house

Is a vacant expression

Of the American dream

With too many memories

To remember any

And nothing nearby to grow green

Not wanting to look back

But having nowhere else to go

This abandoned house

Collapsed in the lap of this hill

Is hoping at the highway

Longing down the road

Wanting someone to come home


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