The Walls Still Stand

All that stands are the walls.
The red brick showing
after a millennium of whitewash fading,
showing just enough to know what was.

Most of the stones that made the floors are gone,
stolen in the late 19th century, sitting now
in hundreds of homes as floors and hearths.
Marble, we are told, though there is no evidence.

The roof is gone too. Fallen. Sun streams in
and grass grows where once there were pools
of steaming water. A few visitors wander
in what was once the center or Roman gossip.

It takes imagination to see it all. What was
and is not more, like love fallen by the wayside,
bit of it stolen away in the homes of others now,
where only the walls still stand.

About this poem.

One of the things about eating at a diner each morning is how people talk as if you were not there. I hear way too much. Today was full of talk of love fallen and walls rising between people. It breaks my heart. I am not naive enough to not know it happens, but still, it breaks my heart.

Tom

PS: The Photograph is from the Baths in Rome. You can order a print of this photograph from Fine Art America here. .