The Mansion

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)..