Familiar

There’s comfort in the old house:

The creak of the stair, and the hello of the door,

The shrill of the crickets, and the gekka gekka of the cicadas,

The swishing sound of the night cars, and the deep bass of the water pump.

Sounds, which rocked me as an infant, are as familiar as my own heart’s rhythm.

Its light calls me home:

Filtering through the old blinds, softly whispering upon the plastered walls.

Fairies and saints take form in the floors and the doors

While magic gathers beneath the soft glow of brass knobs and hinges (though badly in need of screws and catches).

Images, which gave birth to a youthful artist, are as familiar to me as mother’s Marian blue eyes

In full fruit are my father’s grapes and the old pear (pear’s for one’s heirs),

and even the apple that has never borne, now is providing.

Where once a pool cooled off countless summer nights,

there now lies a weed garden planned but never planted.

Beyond the wood’s edge – long a childhood haven – a false green beckons, barred by bramble and burr.

Spaces, which opened a world imagined, are as forgotten and yet as familiar as the young feet that ran them.

There is sadness in this old house

As if in mourning for the family that has left her,

Mold gathers and ants collect without mother’s relentless pursuit

And the old willow gives up its arms without father’s distracted vigilance.

The poison ivy has overrun the door and the steep, narrow stairs threaten faltering steps,

The caretakers can no longer guard against time’s pace – and what once cradled a family is no longer familiar,

Love cannot return youth and returning cannot restore memory.

The long goodbye does not bring answers, only questions,

Listening does not still the pain of forgetting

But return to it I must
To care for those who once did the caring,

No longer caught up but only briefly catching
Wisps of ancient laughter

In this old house, 
Always forever and never familiar, now offering up her ghosts.