An empty house

By Gub (4th of June, Hanging Bank Cottage) 

Every other day

I return

Here 

To this stone grey shell

And scrape another 

Tile from 

Its mosaic

Undoing 

30 years

Of history

A cleaner fish, 

Skirting around the behemoth’s

Body

Zig-zagging amidst the shadows of a leaf dappled carcass

Beams not bones

Holding the sky aloft

Walls withstanding 

Wailing winds

This small stoned

Sanctuary 

With all the wants and wishes 

Of a world 

It’s weeping joys

And cosmic sadness 

Empty now

As a life un-spun

Here the soul of time

Feels exposed 

As if each door

Were both and opening 

And closing 

Of pathways 

The whole house a stilled heart

Through which lives once flowed 

Like blood 

And love 

Followed a rhythmic 

Pump, 

Dilating 

In time with the rise and 

Fall of the day

It’s hard to stay 

hard to leave 

The past is a prisoner 

In the present 

Captive to being unchanged

Every second is a threshold 

To a future 

Un-forged

A house that was a home 

Becomes a house once more 

Yet the life it held, spills forth 

The leaves above, the fields 

Below

Gyrations of shifting greens, 

Dark greys, brilliant blues 

Canopies of light 

Through which swallows

Dip, 

And hedges shelter the trill whistles

Of the wren.

We are not where we think we are,

We are not what we think 

We are

This

unlocked 

Moment

An empty house 

In late spring …