And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

It has been many years
since the storefront was bright with paint,
since farmers gathered by the wood stove
deep in February, planning the next year’s crops,
or talked about the sacred and the profane,

sharing more of their lives in every day talk
than either teller or listener understood.

Seed are no longer sold from the long counters
that once held the promise of seasons to come,
and now are dusty and covered with the dung of mice
who have eaten their way through the remnants
of what was left behind, and then they too
have left. There is nothing here to sell but memories.

Too many years have gone by.
The roof, neglected one day too long,
has collapsed and lies in the middle of the store
like a demented sculpture,
a testament to an abandonment
that happened not in a flash,
but slowly, like torture,
a killing disinterest,
brutal, subtle, and too often
fatal.

About this poem

Neglect, be it on a building, on our relationships, on our spiritual and creative lives, is the way of death, far more subtle, and far more common than an explosive ending, but just as fatal. It really is torture.

The picture was taken in Eagle Rock, Virginia.

Tom