Still There

Once someone's proud and hopeful
domicile, it sits now ramshackle, forlorn
and alone on a remote, rural and heavily
forested stretch of highway. Little
traffic goes by that way, though once,
before the installation of the major
new highway, it hosted its share of the
nation's travellers seeking respite in the
calm and peace of natural surroundings.

Imagination roams within the realm
of possibilities, and popular sentiment
casts a setting of newly-cleared acreage,
with some doughty Jack turning his hand
to hewn timbers wrested from the adjacent
forest. The result: a tight and tidy rustic
home proudly sufficient unto itself. With
a well, out of which one drew crystalline
sparkling, pure and potable water.

There, beside that long-ago home was
the kitchen garden with its herbs and rows
of seasonal vegetables, some to be eaten
fresh, much more to be 'put up' in the
cool dark of the root cellar, to be called
upon to sustain the family in the snowy
depths of hard, long winters of need.

It sits there still, that charmer of a home.
Its builder would still recognize his
outstanding albeit amateur craftsmanship.
He had good reason to burst with pride.
Though viewing it now, he would surely
be overcome with regret and sadness.

It sags from the weight of its unkempt
abandoned reality, yet still stoutly
standing, door slanting ajar, held fast
by its topmost hinge. Roof overcome with
age and the raw presence of nature, green
with moss and algae. Windows, once boarded,
now patched with plywood shards.

Like a sadly forgotten elderly pirate,
leaning on his knobby wooden pegleg,
squinting out of his sole, unpatched eye.
Suddenly, the old man, abandoned to
his sad fate, recalls his heydays of high
seas adventure and a pacific smile
transforms his visage, we imagine.

So too is it with the dilapidated house,
no longer a treasured home. For in its
garden, fronting the lot long reclaimed by
wild nature, glimpses of its former status
twinkle in glorious shades of pink, purple,
red and yellow, as peonies, lupins, roses
and irises boldly, insouciantly, bloom
among rank weeds, proclaiming their
pride: "Look, we're here, still!"