If you’d walk by the road you’d see,
The broken-glassed, barred windows,
The irons on a padlocked door
Once sentinels of proud, shining metal
-now a crumbling, flaky rust.
If you look ‘neath the mien
Of sorry dilapidation
As you walk upon my dusty paths
Flanked by clods of earth
You might raise the dust
And see the specks swirl into shape
And form a dancing mirage
Of my erstwhile magnificence
Those lumps of parched earth
Might sprout rows of flowers
The blind windows that lie in wait
Might just again see
A push on the padlocked door
Might break the rusting hinges
Protesting, squeaking it might open
To welcome you within
Long has been the wait
Since they left us here
And wait we did – for year upon unending year
Till the weeds now seem like friends
And we see them grow in a pattern
In the rose bush flower bed
The parched earth of my compounds
Waited long for the gardener
It smiled temptingly at nebulous clouds
Too far away to perceive its glance
And then it forgot what it felt
To be soft, nurtured and fertile
It took its arid state as a given
And basked in its long wide cracks
And you now wander into my grounds
You see me lie wasted
Would you strike away the cobwebs
And dust the decay away?
Would you tend to my lawns
And see me thrive under your care
Or would you leave like the others
Daunted by my countenance?
(This one was inspired by a painting I had a glimpse of - don't remember the finer details, but just filling in the gaps of what I saw there, was so despondent, so touching, that it had to be put down in words)..
