Oh see the mauve thistles … watch them sway in forever motion
They are cast upon the back drop of green grasses and tough,
springy shrub
Back in behind the scatter of purple on green, lies an old frame
house
Forgotten…burgundy siding still clinging to days gone by… time
departed
Lingering in memory of hands, busy and worn, long passed on to
another place
See the pale blue sky strewn with tufty white, touching the
landscape
This soft frame blanketed about the heavy brick and rock of
tumbled fireplace
Bricks standing still, so high that it strikes one how out of
proportion it is
How important it had been to heat that old house, to provide a
sturdy place
To cook and provide sustenance to the shadowy family moved on,
ghosts now
Its craggy height seems like a small mountain … and is that a
tiny girl
Pigtails around her face, dimpled cheeks, shy dark eyes
peering out from behind
That fortress of red slab, but no only a shadow cast by the
fruit trees, or was it?
I snapped my photos to keep a small part of this enchanting
scene in my heart
But nothing would retain this essence, nothing could compare,
this pink verbena
Underfoot already had a piece of my soul and I could feel the
history seeping
Into this poet’s mind, grateful for the gentle breeze which
stirred the leaves
Huge maples overhead telling their own stories of when the
house was happy
Full of its family, fed and clothed and warm, little feet
scampering on the lawn
Wild now immersed with the fields and air, indented with the
soft wind, creased
Like lines in the old faces that would have shown sadness at
leaving this haven
I feel their life; I have wished for so long to be a part of
such a sweetness as this.
cailin raine
My Comment: This is a real place, a dilapidated farm on the gently rolling hills near Collingwood, Ontario. I was alone, parked my Rav on the side of the gravel road with no one else around and I let my imagination roam as I explored this old homestead. As always the ghosts of a time past come to murmur about the corners and in the dark spaces behind windows and doors ... it is not only the wind that stirs the flowers and not only the breeze that whispers.
