Poems and Poets # 26

The Beauty of Abandonment

Off a dirt road in West Virginia, set far back in a weed-infested field, an abandoned wood-slatted home stands, kneels really, in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I imagine

it is free of worries that wore the floors thin, free of the coming and going that loosened nerves and hinges, free of cries and laughter now that only the voice of the wind comes to roam its empty rooms.

A rooster might alight on the rusty tin roof, but his cock-a-doodle-doo alarms only the interloping field mice asleep beneath a cast-iron stove or the wintering bats suspended from rafters by the hooks of their toes.

In spring, wisteria will climb the grey, sagging boards, peek in through broken-out windows, like a cover-up to apologize for the family that moved their lives into a shiny trailer home closer to town.

I like to think the abandoned house is happy, burden-free, collapsing into itself like a body that has had enough of living and is ready to let go, to relinquish its heart to any weather, thankful to be at home in nature.

Poems and Poets



A poem by Jane Ellen Glasser

(Goodreads Author)