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. 

As Safe As Houses

This house warps and melts like a 

wedding cake in fragrant summer,

each molded corner bleeding into 

the door-frames.

All the furniture is hemmhorraging

its stuffing, regretful and dolorous.

We could peel strips of the faded hardwood

away with our fingertips,

grasping furtively some sense

of decayed mystery beneath the boards,

where the earth meets the hearth.

The fireplace is still choked with coal dust,

and there's pale squares

where paintings once hung

in lost days of antiquity. 

Even the windows,

with their burden of busy insects and

swiftly-rusting screens,

are a reference point in glass.