Thursday, August 04, 2016

Thursday Poem - Scenic Route

For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses."
 
Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray.

Someone always traded
the lonely beauty
of hemlock and stony lakeshore
for survival, packed up his life
and drove off to the city.
In the yards the apple trees
keep hanging on, but the fruit
grows smaller year by year.

When we come this way again
the trees will have gone wild,
the houses collapsed, not even worth
the human act of breaking in.
Fields will have taken over.

What we will recognize
is the wind, the same fierce wind,
which has no history.

Lisel Mueller
(from Alive Together)

3 comments:

Pienosole said...

Sending well wishes this morning.

Tabor said...

Nice pairing of words and photo.

Guy said...

Hi Cate

I always enjoy Lisel Mueller and this poem really reminds me of Wendell Berry's stories about the small farms and towns that are abandoned as people move to the city.

Regards
Guy