03 2017 poetry marathon prompt: photo of derelict building in high desert, snow and tumbleweeds.

Once I Was a Home
by Paul Robert Sanford

I’m not from around here.
All there is to build with here is sandy dirt and scrub brush.
Every board and nail and roll of tar paper had to be trucked in
so I could stand out in the sere landscape,
a monument to civilization and comfort.

I know who lived here.
They had coffee in the morning and sometimes raised their eyes to gaze at the mountains.
Not a lot to do here but mountain gazing and walks under the open sky.
That’s okay. I was shelter for a quiet life.

Not that there wasn’t always something to putter around and take care of.
The fine grit swept in with the wind and on shoes and had to be swept out.
Wind blew the tar paper loose and it had to be tacked back in place.
The roof was too flat to shed all the snow, and once in a few years needed to be shoveled off.

Eventually the last house before the miles before the mountains
is a hard place to live in,
especially when you are alone and older.
The winters seem colder,
and the garbage molders before being carted out.
the place gets a lived in feel, surrounded by half mended projects,
windows begin to stick open or shut,
coffee doesn’t satisfy as well.

I remember an illness, an injury, a time laid up in bed,
when anxious kin folks rolled up on off road vehicles,
notified by the local storekeeper that it had been a long time since.
Arguments, sulking, demands and refusals.
Cycles of negotiations and calm followed by alarms and visits.

Sooner or later a person lacks the strength to keep the place up.
Sooner of later a person lacks the strength to argue or fight back.
The lowlanders win and I am empty and alone.

My only visitors stay long enough to bust out windows and throw trash about.
Soon enough I offer very little shelter beyond a bit of shade,
perhaps a windbreak if the wind comes from the right direction.

Once I was a home, but that time is forgotten now.
If it weren’t so much trouble, the lowlanders would probably tear me down.
Don’t worry, give me enough years and I will fall.
I don’t want to return where I came from.
I am home to stay.