Echoes

The rooms are mostly empty.
Here and there a chair,
rarely two in the same room.

The house echoes your footsteps.
It is beautiful in its design, an octagon of brick,
hard surfaces that bounce sound and makes it
hollow.

It is a museum, the curators tell me,
but it seems more to me, a symbol,
a tragic and beautiful reminder
that we have forgotten the art of talking to each other,
as opposed to at each other.
No wonder the chairs are empty.

About this poem

We have lost the art of conversation, the thoughtful back and forth of words and thought and feeling. When we all become tellers, there is no one to hear.

The picture was taken at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s “other” home.

Tom