A House On the Cliff's Edge

There is a house on the cliff’s edge, Around a quiet, unmarked shoreline At night, the tide lifts high against a foggy moon In the morning, gloomy clouds settle with the sea At times, not even the birds are seen or heard The house is left to nature’s caress Home-crafted seashell chimes sway and sing with the wind Crushed sand dollars lie together on the back porch The shells were once whole, collected by the former owners Long gone are they now, smiling with the moon The owners are the very sound of the ocean spray, Striking the rocks, announcing the cool dawn of day They are not the dark, empty rooms, The rooms that nobody thinks of as they go about their lives The quiet owners are long gone—thought of only by one A stillborn legacy about as tiresome as the sun, When the clouds crisp out its beams . . . A seawater puddle is in the middle of the dining room Nobody knows it sits there, sinking in the floorboards It used to be a far larger puddle after a storm, Stealthily leaking into the house But now it is small—so small—and the boards are moist, Moist with its only companion amongst the instilled silence Nobody thinks of empty, abandoned rooms Nobody remembers the former owners They were not much for socials and gatherings They always lived their quiet, happy lives Without a care of the outside world, Far from anybody’s thought Miles from the nearest home Where the next generation comfortably lives He never finished fixing that leak . . . Sometimes the puddle gets bigger after other storms And when it does, there is almost life there again You can see the chandelier reflected on the unperturbed water As a crystal dangles and falls from on high The dark silence following the drop is as deep as thought . . . Nobody thinks of empty, abandoned rooms Nobody remembers the former owners There is merely a house on the cliff’s edge Around a quiet, unmarked shoreline -March 21, 2013-