Posted

As you walk past the sign,
your eyes crinkle into a smile.
“Posted. Keep Out” it reads,
a warning, or perhaps a plea

to keep strangers and friends at bay,
to keep them from the ruin of a building
with it’s broken windows and rotted wood
and debris of a broken life that lives inside.

You lived this way once, shields up,
afraid of your own tender brokeness,
a tenderness battered and mocked
by the rare visitor you let in the door,

until finally, you no longer let anyone in.
But no more. Something in you has grown hard
without losing the softness of heart.
You have ripped down the sign.

Perhaps because there is nothing there
any longer to steal, or perhaps you have learned
that you can live with so little,
or perhaps, just perhaps

you have learned that not everyone pillages,
and leaves the ruins. Some in fact,
build and restore, bring their own music
and share it,

leaving more
than they take.

About this poem

Friday, my son and I visited the family farm, where my grandfather once lived and worked. On one field, far from the house, is an old shed, empty, windows broken, bereft of paint. There was nothing inside except old oil cans and tools so broken no one felt they were worth taking. A tattered flag hung in one window.

And there was a “Posted” sign. The one in the picture. Which made me think about how, in our broken lives, we put up our own posted signs, and at times, keep out the very people who could save us.

And so, this poem.

Tom