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Old houses make me sad. Abandoned, and often overgrown with vines and thickets, they stand sentinel to the past. They hold their secrets jealously while seeming to mourn the long gone families that once inhabited them.

The county that I live in is sparsely populated, and many dirt roads still ramble through the countryside. I’ve traveled many of those roads, and run across these derelict homes.

Their gaping windows and sagging doors beckon to me, daring me to discover the barrenness they now enclose.

I ache to know their history. I wonder who originally owned them, and whatever became of them.

I long to step over their thresholds and peer into every corner, searching for some hint of what once was. But alas, being that I am but a trespasser, I wistfully stand at the boundary, and bid them my own farewell.

photos courtesy
Robbie Wright

Scene Out My Window

Late evening and the bluejays are active. The sun has played musical chairs with the clouds today.

Out on the old sand mound, a black cat naps lazily between the blackberry vines. Soon twilight will fall, and perhaps he will go on the prowl for some poor, hapless field mouse.

Humidity hangs in the air like a wet blanket, and the trees seem still until I glance to the top and notice a little stirring in the branches.

The turkey oaks never seem to fare well in the brutal August heat. Spring’s green shimmer fades from their leaves and turns them brown around the edges.

I watch as a lone bird swoops through the oaks and disappears into the woods beyond. And as I drop the curtain on the scene out my window and another day, I imagine she’ll find a place to roost through the long night ahead.

courtesy
Robbie Wright

The View

Outside my window, the world is bright.  A mix of oak, persimmon, and sassafras wave their branches gently in the breeze, and long leaf pines stand sentinel against a pale blue sky.  Motionless white clouds hold no promise of rain as the afternoon wanes, and the dog scurries into the shade.