Passing My Old Family Home

Passing my old family home today

I see the ivy drooping like abandoned memories ;
Like wistful tears slowly seeping from my old bedroom window
I see the steps where as a child I took each one at a time

And where my late father had to take each one at a time
On his way to his final operation.

Steps which as my mother grew older and frailer
Became like incarcerating prison bars
Depriving her of her freedom
And for her friends an equal tyranny
And foreboding encumbrance
When they came to visit her .

I see another family now discovering the subtle ; the eccentric ego of that house
And I wonder if that third step on the stairs
Creaks like a treasonous siren
When I sneaked back home in the early hours

My bedroom window is half open
And I wonder if whoever sleeps there now
Listens to the traffic on the street below
And can tell whether the day is fine or wet by the tyres slashing the rain on the road
Or hum with the warmth of rubber squelching under on a hot summers day




But I bless myself and pass on
I’ll never mount those steps again

Now I too would take them one step at a time again
And now more contemplatively.

And I wonder if those people who I never want to meet
Know that they are trampling , jumping , staggering
Over the memories of my being ; the journeys we took
From birth to death ; from yearning to sorrow
From expectation to ecstasy

But life turns , and in my new home I try to still the time
By stopping the pendulum of our grandfather clock
Which I took with me when we divided up my parents pieces

It is motionless now as I dread its shrill chime on the hour
And I want to still the wandering of our ghosts
The orphaned memories we abandoned there

But those open windows are like gaping eyes and they see
All that’s passed ,
And all that’s going on within the walls of my old home

When I pass , I bless myself
But that accusing finger
Reaches out to me
From my old room

And all the joys and sorrows
Tumble with abandon in my mind once more
And the deep echoes of guilt begin
To simmer somewhere and look back
At my betrayal of all those sacred buried treasures

And from two bleak windows beneath the conscience
Two eyes forlorn and bleak , look out at me
In the silent chimeless chasm of that spaceless dark