© 1998  Christian Thomas

The Sad Old House

The sad old house sits idle in the woods crumbling,

reduced to a futility of splintering wood,

dust, rust, and disorder.

Fallen leaves rot and bleak marigolds blear down

in haunt brigade. Windows once hung with blinds

are now blind windows, gaping maws devouring

the emptiness around them.

Inside is the collapse of pride, the ruin of joy.

Spiders crawl on webs that dark hallways enclose,

and ghosts wander aimlessly in dusty cracked mirrors

that once ate the moment alive, but now only give

recollection.

Life like lightning once struck this house

and raced through it in rapture and abandon,

in privilege and harm, in absence and regret.

Now all that remains is loneliness seeping from

the rack and ruin like blood from an open wound.

the past recalled in mist, no house shall stand again

as when the eye first glimpsed that once golden moment

now gone

a sudden flash of light in which each thing in lusty

radiant might towers to its height, yet imperceptibly

bends to its own decline

so slow at first the rot within cannot be seen and its

vanishing point known only as the fate of other things

then come the ravishings of time

paint cracks, glory fades and soon the weathered house

falls into squalor and decay, a drear and dream-ashen

lovelorn shell

Occasionally the wind whips and whistles

through the ruin. No one's listening, though,

so the noise is not a betrayal

of a once hard-won trust. Other small noises:

creaks, the low groan of warping wood,

all faintly echo the thrum of passed living.

And scattered about everywhere in disarray

are the torn banishments of a former glory,

a time of prosper and private thoughts

that still linger in muster old letters

kept hidden beneath the floorboards.

Letters that someone someday

may or may not find. Nothing here

is protected, just as the small marble angels

embossed upon remnants of the fireplace

no longer guard the hearth.

daunted, haunted, crumbling to dust

no window unbroken, no nail without rust

the rubble cries out against time's unkind dismissal

the creaking boards, the moans and groans

from the rafters, are all prayers gone unanswered,

final desperate pleas for permanence...

looking back, those moments of pride and stately

manor that once beckoned a friendly welcome

are now no more than a cruel joke

and the angels embossed upon their marble

canvas fallen graceless and unobserved

lie soundless in squandered sunlight

Long ago sunlight streaming through the windows

hypnotized these walls into rooms

filled with memories: the first child was born here;

the second child was married here.

Then one by one the children left, their belongings

assembled, detained, abandoned. Long hours passed,

everyone grew old, and time like a searing wind

crumbled the garden's stone statues,

condemning everything that happened here

to a vast dark sea of things unremembered.

Now all the laughter and tears, hopes and dreams

of former times lie scattered among the debris,

spent and timeless, pale witnesses in the fading light

to this last and darkest night of standing

for the sad old house

that was and is

no more.

each house holds fast in certain notion

to a garner of worth measured in events

unmindful of the clock

unnoticed the motion is swift and sure

toward something far beyond what is known

until the struggle to stop the sunset begins

at last all things are vanquished by ignoble age

and in the end collapse as final shadows

wistful for sleep slumber endlessly

too soon it is all sorrowed

too soon it is all neglected,

diminished, gone forever, lost in obscurity

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