The Crumbling Glory

The Crumbling Glory

The gabled windows on the antique structure
Looked a specter.
Their sills darkened by the coiled foliage
Untamed, free.
The visible darkness within, sure camouflages
A secret or a secret soul, spirit or a ghost.
No one lives there, no one wants to.
A habitat too musty for the living present.

Yet, the seven broken steps
That led to the cottage door
Seemed a favored haunt for
Frolicking children by the score.

The silent rooms sheltered sure
The dreamy and the scheming humanity of yore.

The Banyan and the Pine
That grew and wasted and grew again
Stood sentinel in straight patience
Watching the happy and the hapless
Of generations past-spacing the yard.
They shelter still, creatures
Winged and the wingless.

Strange how nature is sacrosanct
But things man-made are sacrilegious.

Even so, the house fissured and decayed
Priceless value to its ruins attached
For, the people moving about the old mansion
Color it in shades of scintillating imagination
Mixing time, space and action.

And Lo! The specter, Good God!
Transforms into a thing of beauty
Rare and treasured.