More Maintenance Than Rescue

There is a little left. A few walls.
Rubble on the floor that used to be the roof.
Here and there a machine that was not worth moving
when it came time to leave.
Trees grow inside the building. Decades old.
Sit long enough, and you often do,
and you will hear a stone, loose and mortarless, fall.

Not everything is saveable.
That has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn.
There is such a thing as too broken,
too far gone for us to rescue ourselves
or others or the stone walls left alone too long.

This is why you do the work of restoration every day,
long before it is needed, understanding a full life
is more about maintenance than rescue.

About this poem

A poem about lives. About buildings. About love. About faith. About the hard lessons compassion has taught me. Poetry is never about one thing.

The picture is from an abandoned factory in Shushan, NY.

Tom