The Emotion of Lost Things

The problem is I always want to stop.
To go in. To walk the abandoned walls,
gaze out the broken windows,
read the graffiti like art of an ancient civilization.

I see them every where. Even overgrown
by Virginia Creeper and wild grapes.
You see them. The dead things. The empty places.

Perhaps it is just because I have an eye for them,
for the broken things. They sing to you,
their siren song of the loved now abandoned.
Left to die.

But not yet. You go to them. A lost love
drawn to the deathbed, unable to save,
but able to sing one last song

and reminisce of futures
not worth the work, no longer needed,
in a world with too few saviors.

About this poem

I have restored a lot of things in my day. Restoration is something instilled in me by my father, who was a master restorer – houses, cars, boats, furniture. And so today still, when I see places or things abandoned and coming undone, I often stop and wander through, camera in hand, capturing what is left. My mind is spent half deciphering its history, and half rebuilding it in my own mind, going through what it would take to restore it to its glory.

But I am only one man. I can’t do all the work I can imagine. So I take pictures and bask in the emotions of lost things, knowing most of them will never be reclaimed, only remembered one last time.

Happens with people too. The poem can be about both.

Tom

PS: The picture was taken in Bellows Falls, VT, in a wonderful old train graveyard.