Thursday, April 02, 2009

Thursday Poem - Scenic Route

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
Scenic Route from Alive Together

6 comments:

Endment said...

Sure sounds like the Texas Panhandle - Sunrise and sunsets were spectacular and so were the winds.

Tabor said...

This photo and the poem certainly sang a pure true note to me. I have been contemplating how fast life moves on. Thanks.

One Woman's Journey - a journal being written from Woodhaven - her cottage in the woods. said...

The poem brought sadness to my heart. It is so true.

Sky said...

i always wonder what has happened in the life of a family when i drive along a country road and see an abandoned house, wood bleached or time-worn into light gray, porch and roof leaning to one side. i always feel sad to see the remnanats of a life once lived, now faded into the past.

Anonymous said...

What is it about abandoned buildings that tugs at the heart strings so? They have such a romance and melancholy about them, and that poem was so perfect, it personified your photo. I would love to replace the glass and go at that gorgeous trim with a fresh coat of paint...

Aiyana said...

Lovely, lovely poem and perfect photo.
Aiyana