Memoirs of a Cabin

Once I was so full of life, Teeming with children, struggle and strife Every day, Mother got up and made Papa some coffee, Made herself some tea. Then she would gently shake the little ones awake, Making sure that they could get to school on time, And for themselves a future make. Then the times changed, The family, they got a car The children all moved away and the parents With them. I hoped that someone would come back, Someone to fill me again with life, But now I sit here, lonely Thinking of the olden days, Slowly, so slowly eroding away. I awake in the morning and discover, A tree has fallen next to me. This pavement thing is on my right, With horseless carriages speeding by. I'm just an old cabin now, Remembering the good old days. Before I fell into myself and started to waste away. They say that houses are made of other things now, Plaster and metal and tin on the roofs. None were made as good as I was, Wood and mud to chink up the walls. My windows were glass, and sometimes plastic My floor was the earth itself Life was much better And in the bad weather The family would take the cocoa off of the shelf And talk of the day when they would get a new house, One made of plaster and metal and tin on the roof, Then they wouldn't have rain coming down on thier heads And rain spots soaking into thier beds. But I enjoyed them. Now the family is gone, never to return And so, in this great wilderness the cabin falls, Never to be missed. The cowardly taste death many times, but I, as a valiant man, taste it but once.