An Old House Seen In Passing

An Old House Seen In Passing

The empty house on the hill tips into the chill wind

like a ship crawling port-ward, listing drunkenly

in a vast-sea void of  tangled dry grass and 

dead barbed-wire fences,

The window-frames hollowed and vacant,

even the doors pried from their hinges

in the swirling backwash of drowned years.

In an upstairs room, a cracked mirror

hides unknowable depths, 

blinded by a yellowed sheet.

The boards warp and twist 

as the water bleeds across the sagging ceiling, 

and the doorways hold little

except the cold, and the hours.