Nine

Okay - forgive the dust, sometimes I have dry spells. This one didn't turn out quite how I hoped. I wasn't able to turn it around to where I wanted to go with it without making it cheesy. In any case, I'm sure not many people read these things anyways...so...



Abandoned houses

Empty, the life has moved away,
the lamp has darkened as the skies have gone grey.　
Lost interst, broken principles. Walking away...

It used to be that things looked so bright.
The sun can't get brighter on Easy Street when everything is going right.
Even the shadows never looked so menacing under the reflections of a brighter day.
Now paint can't cover flaws and phantoms under the once trodden stairway
in these abandoned houses.　

It's not that nobody cared. Quite the opposite may be true.
Even choice takes you down a wrong road or two -
Count these as lessons learned. Perhaps the thought of meeting "the dream"
has faded like the color from the lawns and the trees.　
Delusions of granduer perhaps have fallen, been bruised and scraped - wounded.

There's no one home, they've moved on
What's left here among the weeds and the broken fences?
The welcome's gone from the mat in the doorway
How we wish a light would shine through the window once again -
there's so much more here than they've become... for these abandoned homes.

But they're not gone forever, where the light once shone.
Not every house can rest empty, there's still room for hope
Looking on their eyes, windows to the soul, the heart still holds a treasure.
Like broken hearts, these can be restored.

Don't let the clutter block your path to the door,
there's more value here than maybe even before,
The experience of choices, though the scars remain,
can rebuild life into the walls and the frame,
who will point the light to these darkened halls,
to restore the life they were created for...

Can you invest the time in these abandoned houses...