Visit to My Childhood Home

Poem first published on: https://tinyurl.com/yru6hfkn

History trapped inside flaking plaster,
Obscured from the view.
Buried beneath the firm red bricks
With a cemented future anew.
But crumbling corniche betrays
Glazed coat of fresh paint,
It hides the bricked moments
Some heal and others taint
The foundations with poisoned blood,
Shed in a whirling quagmire,
As the stately mansion sinks
With its present and future entire.

Only the ghost watches now,
With dead eyes wide awake.
Staring at debits inked in blood
As the reaper comes to rake
In the fields of abject despair.
The crops of pain sowed with tears,
Planted with seeds of gloom,
Fed on neglect through the years.
The crops, they sprout with hate
In them and wails from ghosts of past
Like a death knell, it echoes the news
The estate’s not to last.
Dry winds blow by the orchard
And the dead shrivelled branches crack.
Yellowed leaves on this hallowed ground
Covers an unweeded garden track.
A land that bore the crests of hope
And troughs of loss and pain,
Lies unkempt today, playing host
To the sun and moon and rain.