by Jim C. Carpenter
Copyright © 1984
The old home place looked lonely and forsaken today as I drove up the quarter mile dirt lane that meanders eastward from Northaven Road, to the old abandoned farmhouse where I spent my boyhood days.
Once this was a lively place filled with activity and sounds of daily work and play. Today the bustle and sounds were gone, replaced by an eerie silence . . . a silence broken only by the wind as it whispered through the tall grass and weeds that grew everywhere, like a victorious army surrounding its conquered foe.
If this old house could only talk, what tales it would tell and what secrets it could reveal. But it can only stand in silence, patiently and silently waiting for the elements of nature to take their toll.
Like an old soldier who has fought a good fight, it has lived out its years of glory and can only wait to gracefully and humbly return to the dust of the earth.
By the summer of 1984, the old house was empty and abandoned. I wrote these lines after a
visit to the old home place that summer.
The sad old house stands alone and still
With a frown upon its face.
Like a feeble derelict, stands and grieves
In famine and disgrace.
I well remember years gone by
When the house was in its prime,
Before its youth was whisked away
By the sweeping winds of time.
Today I see through misty eyes,
In a sea of tangled weeds,
Occasional flowers growing wild
From long forgotten seeds.
I hear some old familiar sounds,
Through memories unconfined,
And picture scenes of bygone days
Through the windows of my mind.
Like me, the old house stands alone,
And awaits its time to claim
Whatever reward or recompense waits
In the dust from whence it came.
Jim C. Carpenter