Sans Histoire

I live in the blue house
you pass every day,
unremarkable, really,
set slightly off the road

with it’s slate roof and flower beds
of phlox, ivy and roses
that climb through the trellis
at the end of the porch.

I don’t expect you to have noticed it.
The house, like me
have no past.
We’re invisible

in plain sight,
captive to a heart broken
almost beyond repair, captive
to quiet hope

that lacks fireworks,
except deep inside,
where love and hope smolder,
waiting it’s chance

to make history.

About this poem

I am astonished sometimes, when I stop to talk to perfect strangers, at the stories I hear. The tales of love and loss and hurt and healing. All in people who, until I began to talk to them, had no histories. They were like cardboard cutouts on the sidewalk. Not quite real.

And yet, we all are.

Tom

PS – The photograph was taken in Memphis, right outside the Peabody Hotel, a couple of blocks from Beal Street.