Homestead @ AMERICAN DIGEST

April 24, 2016

Homestead

Homestead

It was found in the fog that shivered
        the slivers of glass in the windows.
It was seen in the sheen of the moon
         on the unworn wood of the floor.
It spoke with the slow, patient clutching of light
         and tapped out the unknown codes of the flesh,
         the indistinct worm of the years and the shapes
         of desire, possession, and fate.
It was mute.

It was stitched in the spaces
         of the wind's alphabet.
It was clothed in cool hands
         gloved in wet weather.
It appeared on the paths
         that admitted no passage.
It's rachety rhythms
         were all made of match sticks.
It waited.

It's slashings were tattooed
         on drapes of dank velvet.
It's gibbering laughter inserted itself
         between doorway and jamb and continued to carve.
It's snickering plumbing
         rotted the dinner.
They had left, they had left.
         Indeed, they had left.
Of that all their objects would clearly attest.

Posted by Vanderleun at April 24, 2016 11:50 PM

Comments:

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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Lovely, this. And Bob Ross. And Eva. And all of it.

I am provoked to live.

Thanks.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh at July 26, 2012 5:14 PM

If I didn't know better, I would think these images were of the home of my childhood, and the people in the first could have been either my mother and her siblings or me and mine.

It was never meant to last, except that it did. For all its faults, there is still a part of me that wishes I could pass it on to another generation.

Posted by: Julie at July 27, 2012 1:57 AM

Today, I emptied out the house that has been in my life for nearly 50 years. It was the only house my parents ever owned. We spent every holiday,celebrated birthdays,and had lazy summer swims there. All gone now...

Posted by: Leslie at July 28, 2012 9:31 PM

Posted by: Leslie at July 28, 2012 9:32 PM

It's from another place and time. The 70's at my grandparents farm. They taught me so much. Wisdom and hard work. Spending a weekend there I thought I'd sleep in, my grandfather (army surgeon) had other plans on a Saturday at 7 a.m. Open the windows and start raking a sea of leaves, after you eat your grandmother's farina or wheatena. If I could only transplant those memories to my kids to make them understand when times were simpler and had more clarity. Eat and laugh. Not a care in the world.

Posted by: ambiguousfrog at September 16, 2014 5:03 AM

So many memories, each one remembered a trip through time to seasons past.
Look to the pictures of the Detroit area dining room with the ceiling falling in, yet the built-in china cabinet intact. Think of the Thanksgivins, birthdays, Christmas, Easter and all the other celebrations that happened in that room. Yet, today, it waits for the creeping decay to take it down, uninhabited as if no one had ever lived there. And it repeats, home after home, block after block, in Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, and Buffalo. Cleveland too.
Where have all the people gone? Does any of this even matter???

Posted by: tomw at September 16, 2014 10:39 AM

Casey: Only the door to my memories, and the few paintings and treasured pieces I kept. It is a bittersweet memory, because I know it can never be again. I am glad most of my kids will have the memory, too..

Posted by: Leslie at September 16, 2014 6:44 PM

I had grandparents in WVA. In my youth I spent many many memorable days with them and various aunts and uncles at my grandparents home. Hikes in the woods, learning to shoot .22s, holidays with cousins. FANTASTIC memories.Of course all of that is gone now and in 2007 I was traveling through WVA and wanted to see my grandparents old house and catch a bit of memories. I was foolish to think it would be what I remembered.It was run down by the new owners The open fields surrounded the property had been sold off in chunks and other dwellings replaced the apple trees, gum trees and garden.

It was nothing as I recalled, of course. I hadn't cried in a decade but at that point but I broke down. Hard.

I wouldn't go down Pioneer Drive and look at that property right now for $10K.I have a few photographs and memories of what I recall, and largely washed the brief 2007 trip from my memory.

I can only hope to leave an equal legacy for my children and theirs, at my present homestead.

Posted by: Snakepit Kansas at April 24, 2016 4:47 PM

That was poignant. As I get older, places I lived come to me in the night in sensory memories. Like Bob Dylan's line, living in a new city now after many other seasons and streets, "me I'm still on the road, heading for another joint." One day it all ends.

Posted by: bill at April 24, 2016 8:55 PM

I haven't been back since divorce forced the sale, over twenty years ago now. The kids have gone down there. They tell me what's there now, all changed. They lived there when they were small, before everything went to hell. It had been in the family since 1900, relatively unchanged for the hundred years prior to that. I've had dreams where I walk down the path to the river, I feel it under my feet...honestly, tears, this time of the day?

Posted by: Will at April 25, 2016 5:49 AM