Old House, Back Road

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.