We found it worn and leaning hard,
the door ajar, the garden bare -
a house with nothing left to guard,
yet still, we thought our hope was there.
We hammered back what wind had taken,
we braced the walls, we cleared the field;
but every year the place grew older,
we learned the meager way it yielded.
The porch sank deeper, slowly drowned
the lilac where the snow first fell;
the apples thinned, the voices thinned,
and all our effort held a spell.
We made a life between the cracks,
a history we filled with light,
but all we leave are shallow marks
upon the stone's indifferent night.
Tonight, the house leans in to hear
the softest creak of settling bone.
We sit as dust, who once were fire,
our lives reduced to what it's known.
And so it rests, this empty hull,
a shadow that has caught our tears;
it waits, until the final wall
retains the sound of all our years.
GBS
2020
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