The House

A ‘Metaphor’ Poem by Elizabeth Lancaster

It was the house on the corner,
standing like an old man.
Hunched and settled from the weight of its history.
Leaning, faded, condemned.

Its dark, weeping, windows - the eyes

It weeps for the children who used to play

And seek comfort in the smile of its white picket fence

Now yellow, now cracked.

Green, hazy, half closed, eyes
Still peering out onto a world that walks past
Unaware

Of those children that have grown and gone off to war

Will they never come home?

I walked past once, it groaned at me

Perhaps a final attempt to whisper its story

A story of gardens, and book clubs,

A father and his sons.

The old house creaks

Of its beauty, of its history.
Each brick inlays a memory
That may never be heard.

Still, it leans on its solid cane.
A forgotten monument,
A silent heritage.