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.
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Very fine.
Posted on the same day as a story bemoaning the vanishing of the middle child.
That was both wonderful and terrible.
Hiraeth. It has me.
That’ll put a harsh on your day.
POWERFUL ………
I never had it. It will crush me if I let it. I haven’t let it so far.
That was deeply poignant as I age with my dear wife.
We have just put my boyhood home up for sale. ( My mom’s farm, 54 acres. Dad died 16yrs ago. Been in the family 50 yrs.)
Those photos remind me of our grandparent’s place in Greenleaf, Idaho.
After a recent business trip, I visited my boyhood home near Dayton. I had not stepped in that yard since 1974. It was where I learned to pass a baseball with my Dad and played in the creek behind the house. I was prepared to see my old neighborhood in disrepair, but was pleasantly surprised to see just the opposite. I walked up and down the street and boyhood memories came flooding back.
As my father said, “When you go to search for your childhood home, it isn’t your home that you’re looking for. It’s your childhood.”
Entire American cities have been abandoned to the dark.