Farmhouse

The gravel driveway,
a mile long.
A white clapboard farmhouse
set back farther even 
than the end of the lane.
The fall-down ramshackle
read barn,
faded into "rustic".

The curtains blew out the windows,
screenless, to rest on the mildewing 
roof. It was grey when they built
the beauty, decades past.
Now it looks like a rooftop garden,
maples growing from the gutters.

It rains underneath the grand pines
everyday, dew dripping onto the beds
of fallen needles. Once upon
a long time ago
children made a fortress under the saplings,
a fitted bedsheet thrown across
the green bending necks.
Dirty overalls and the sounds of 
chickens in the yard.

The wishing for a lemonade stand,
but the isolation too much to overcome.
Little calloused hands and red-ribboned
pigtails. Barefeet hoeing in the garden. 

Running through green stalks of corn,
yet to tassel out. Running until sometimes
they got lost, turning and turning in the
afternoon sun. 

Somedays running away into the fields
to catch a cat nap,
to let their little limbs rest from hauling straw
into the lofts. From watering down the sweating cows.

The long porch, shaded from the evening glare
where they sat with red popsicles painting their
downy mouths. A brother and sister pair
who had only each other,
a mother with chicken feed 
sack dresses, wanting another baby
in this drought. 
And the father who had no reserves in
the use of his belt across the backs
of sunburnt thighs. 

The curtains waver like lungs now,
the edges wet and moldering.
The screen door 
swings ajar in the sad winds
of a foggy spring.
The children grew up
and left,
or tried to grow up.

They were crooked stalks,
and the little girl ran away in a 
blue rusted out pick-up,
16 and distended with baby.

The boy caught a late greyhound
out of Iowa towards
the ocean to test his luck
on a boat at sea.
The merchant marine
called to him.

The house is greying
and the chickens have died
or pecked their way through the
fencing.

Lying in the parlor,
the threadbare rugs
and the smell of mothballs.
The beds neatly made,
the floorboards scattered with dust.

One day the ambulance ran itself right down the 
winding lane
into the soybeans
to find two,
burnt and staring
into the sun
for something that would never come home.