Underneath

From the street,
you cannot see anything important.
You see paint flecking
off the cedar siding,

a porch that sags.
Standing on the street,
you see a window,
cracked and dulled with age,

you see what is worn
from lack of love,
from storms,
from poverty and exhaustion.

You do not see what lies underneath,
the foundation of stone
still solid, the bones
of the place, rough hewn

and far stronger than you imagine them,
carefully built, oh so carefully built,
each joint made to last, to flex
to live beyond the lifespan

of a single man, built
to withstand weather and storms,
and yes, even a generation
of neglect.

No, these things you cannot see
from the street, You have to go inside,
to the dark places to find the real strength.
They will not show themselves

in a quick glance from the street, only
if you go in,
deep inside,
and look.

About this poem

I am a lover of old houses and buildings. I’ve had the privilege of living in four old buildings. The house I live in now was built in 1800. The character of them, the warmth, cannot be duplicated. But they are work to keep up. More so than a newer home, for sure.

One of the things I have learned is that you don’t buy an old home by looking at the outside. You have to look at the bones, the foundation, what lies underneath. That’s where you find the worth of a house, where you discover if it will stand another generation or not. You have to crawl into the dark places, see what doesn’t show. If those places are solid, then the rest is just paint and love. If they are not, nothing you can do will save the house.

People are largely the same way. What we see is rarely the important stuff. No, to find the important stuff, we have to see their dark places. Not dark as in evil, just dark as in unseen from the streets. That takes work. That takes time. And most of us won’t bother.

But there is a reward for us if we do. Getting to know an old house intimately, it becomes part of you, And getting to know a person intimately, the same thing happens. There is a joining together, a sense of destiny and one-ness that is unlike anything else we will experience.

But… we have to go inside. We can’t see it from the street.

Tom

PS – the picture was taken in the barn owned by the woman I love.