Something More Than Ruins

The building is abandoned,
lines still strong and straight,
paint stripped to grey clapboards.
raw and porous.
The doors are locked.

What lies inside, no one knows.
the windows are too high,
too clogged with layers of dirt
that hide the mystery and romance
you are somehow sure

lies within.

So familiar is the shell
that no one questions it, no one
imagines it as more,
either in the past,
when it bustled
and certainly not as a thing
of life in the future. No one dreams

of color
on it’s drab walls,
of what color it once was
or might be. No one imagines it
warm inside,

a place of romance and light,
vibrant with passionate hues,
the great rolling side doors open
to spring, a place of creation,
conversation
and life.

They think you slightly mad
as you slow, each time you pass it,
your eyes lingering, seeing something more
than ruins.

About the poem

At the edge of town is an abandoned train station. It has lay empty and grey since the first time I visited Vermont. I cannot tell you how many times I have passed it, imagining it as it was, and imagining being in a financial position to buy it, and turn it into a large artists studio and gallery.

I feel that way about people as well. More and more as I get older, I realize how we rarely see people very deeply, beyond the veneers. And I am surprised how fascinating people are, if you can open the slightest crack in the veneer. How many of them open their hearts surprisingly deeply, happy to simply, finally, be seen.

Tom