Old House

Age once passed as wisdom. Peeling paint meant pay attention. A poem for this age.

Dan Meyers @UnSplash

Not much to look at,

It once turned a head.

Fixer-upper on a street

Gone quiet, bypassed, relevant

No more as four-lane’s

Hiss pumps proud

Efficiency.

Attic crammed to hoarding: Once

Crucial files, photos captured

Now ceding to history’s haze.

Walls and ceilings wrinkled,

Dermal peeling, shedding,

And shed again. Acned in youth, now

Rutted, weathered by wisdom

And life’s bronzing.

Rafters once strewn with

Dross of youth now reek

Of teachings,

Most unheard, shaken,

Dismissed as old and worn:

Regret the cobwebs

And price of pain.

Fixtures creak…Rust.

Replaced as needed, insured,

Co-pays met, systems

Await a next failed

If vital truss or timber.

Plumbing leaks: Nightly

Tending needed. Once

Lustful sluice shunted long since, now

Leaden pipes drip untapped,

Duplicative duty

Done.

Frosted windows

Warp my view: Shades

Slid shut shield

Harsh light once blind

To curb or limit.

Furnace, once fired by

Gaseous flame, if

Ruled by rash, unruly

Temps grows old,

Cold, embers left unstirred

New winter come too soon.

Yard silent, but for

Rumblings hushed with

Daily meds, dosage writ

In dusty corners of idled

Bookends.

Painted once, now dressed in

Chips and peels no

Salve or fashion’s styptic longer

Hide.

Roof sags,

Long-worn slate of

Stiffened tiles sport

Brushed if ragged snow

Thick and dark in warmer years.

In haunted bath and bedroom:

Mirrors gone grey, reflections

Ghost, shimmering if

Ready for an ancient glance.

Floors slump and

Sag, purpled, bruised

By leaps of joy, anger,

Dance and drag

Of untold passage,

A lifetime’s come

And gone. Chapters

Parsed of what is read

As history, a lived and loving tome,

Witness to images stowed in

Attic boxes,

Parched paper, as faded ink reclines

In a silent home.