Conway (Winter ND) by David M. Higgins
Abandoned House
The smell of moonlight on blue snow
The blandness of no shadows
The crackling of frost settling in the clapboards
The screen door banging in the wind
The wooden porch slats creaking with past steps
The silence of black windows with no blinds
The snow that has filled in the grooves of an icy road
The distant whine of the Great Northern
A hymn drifting through the leafless
limbs of the old forked elm
“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling
Come home, come home
Ye who are weary come home”
The brush strokes speak of our impermanence.
In such withering places lies the melancholy
comfort of what was. But the remains tell another
story, not just of some romantic notion of the past
but because it is what time will do to us.
The Discerning Woman's Gallery of Verse 