Thursday, March 03, 2011

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

4 comments:

Tabor said...

Such a sad thing is an empty house...especially when it retains signs of livability and love.

the wild magnolia said...

What we do not care for disappears!

Wonderful poem, I enjoyed it so much.

Love the house!!...photo~

Blessings.

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

Sad but so true.
A reminder that I left
I have returned
I am grooming
the woods
all is well..

Angie said...

It is haunting in its loveliness...Something, some spirit, in abandoned houses captures a part of my soul and spirit...