Life of the Hidden Rustic Farmhouse
The hollow blur of a willow’s eaves
dust a permeable water’s edge into an echo.
A sun burnt roof from a saloon-lettered western taunts my lens.
Cradled away from new age traffic, the barn is a fledgling cowed by the weather.
A camouflaged hideaway like those chiseled into the wombs of hills like glass guardians.
The rustic barn is an orphan now;
Five wicker and leather base chairs are reluctantly pushed in, askew, to the dining table.
One is slightly open aside, as though awaiting a guest.
Glass milk bottles are half full of bright curdle now.
Their kitchen window is resplendent with butterfly sparkle from a daughter’s art project
An apron so colorful, dusted and sweet it barely remembers the washer.
A creaking ladder is heavy with the ghost footfalls of boys who grew up.
One room has tousled lace curtains —— shielding some elicit touch and mutual smiles from daylight.
This shell of a domestic history plays its retired role well.
The current owners had lived, loved fully and hurt here.
They came to know family and say farewell to each other like touching hands.
Contact, a lingering, then the pregnant departure.
Nourishing, tenacious and hopeful but yearning for more underneath.
Fitting as its derelict treasured beauty slid away from view like a Gatsby sailboat cousin “borne ceaselessly into the past”