Best Clapboards Poems

A deserted old house stood off the county road a little way.
To keep apace of living I rushed by it almost every day.
For years I'd wanted to visit there to see what secrets it held,
And perhaps find out about the folks who in it had...

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On the wind-swept Nebraska prairie sits a building in wretched shambles,
Surrounded by a sagging fence and overgrown with prickly brambles.
It was once a bustling one-room school house, abandoned long ago.
Its weather-beaten clapboards, I judged to be a century old or so.

Atop its cupola, swaying listlessly...

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Urban legend now bared to the bone
Yet its trademark can no larger store clone
No glossy signs, spacious lots fealty to hone
But in colloquial parlance a tradition has grown
Larger Discount stores with dignity stand alone
Corner grocery, its squalid tenement doth bemoan
Manicured plots, concentric lots posh boutiques...

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Slender, whispering and flaming fireweed surrounds
the gray-weathered clapboards of the deserted
homestead whose torn gingham curtains blow among
the paneless windows with the gentle breeze of
summer morning.

Silence is challenged by harmonizing birds
who serenade the observer of the rustic
vista with the ardor of a courting lover;
cobwebs woven by...

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Amid the glacial hills of central Maine
There stood forsaken, gray, an ancient farm,
Which always filled us with a vague alarm.
Atop the humpback ridge of a moraine,

Abandoned now, for centuries it stood,
Defying time, and ice, and hurricanes.
Its windows now were yellowed, cloudy panes,
Its weathered clapboards, bleached...

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Nestled deep in the tawny, drab woodland
Sedate cottage neither haughty nor grand
Sparse hovel of unassuming, itinerant brigand
Martial decor of detached highwayman starkly bland
The etched path sculpted by intemperate hand
No manicured garden on the scrubby strand
Briers and brambles errant straggler must withstand
Thatched clapboards stable his stallion...

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The realtor ushered us up the cracked sidewalk,
Paint peeling from the clapboards
Revealed a rainbow of colors in the cracks.
Like a geologist who looks at canyon walls
And sees the ebb and flow of oceans writ large,
We could chart the house’s history
In the dusty rose and drab...

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The wind wolfed through the back porch
setting chime clappers to gong,
seething with ferocity, dropping power lines 
swacking the gutters against the clapboards.

Window panes rattle, chattering with the storms,
conversing with the tic tap and ping of the plumbing.
harmonizing with the trill of whistling wind.

The wind wolfed...

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"She will reign on the cliff above the quay, this derelict house restored to her former beauty. No beast of the field, nor bird in the air shall wander her halls. Now she belongs to me."         ...

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Sundial
My passion is the silent weather vane
The gambrel brought such sorrow
Much I marveled this roughcast cairn
Eagerly I looked for the lintel

I have dreamed of the clocks
Eagerly I looked for the masonry
It was heterodox
Somewhat louder than the freemasonry
Back into my memories rewinding
And the clapboards never machining

Deep...

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The clothesline hung, low, and limp.
Raucous, red, long johns 
and worn, white, blue jeans
pinned like butterflies in a box;
dangled bodiless.

The neighbors all envied Mom’s skill.
Nobodies tidy whities were brighter.
The pulley wheel whined and clanked
against back porch clapboards
when a stiff wind blew through.

And, the state of...

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A deserted Victorian house stood off the county road just a little way.
To keep apace of living I rushed by it most every day.
For years I'd wanted to visit there to see what secrets it held,
And perhaps find out about the folks who in it...

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I could have fallen
Stepping down the hill slope
On the slippery roots
Not wearing my work boots
Just rubber-soled sneakers turning down Main.

A new-balanced moment
Walking back to my room
By tenement house-caves
A descendent of slaves
Hammers his clapboards shut to shield out the rain and his pain.

Not quite just like...

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Nothing Lasts Forever

Weathered clapboards count death’s cadence
bleached bones of faded lives
rusted bells hang limply – silenced
mourning beneath long tearless skies
sad emptiness when longing dies.

Once, bells pealed, come hither
bright sunshine kissed love’s tower
none felt the doubtful shiver
one heart condemned to cower
blood stained - within the bower.


©1/15/2018

submitted...

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How empty can an inbox possibly be?
Not unlike a door..... practically off at hinges
The paint is definitely peeling
More than one shutter has fallen astray. 

One piece at a time

Have you ever seen that?
How old houses....
 the shutters give way one slat at a time
It's almost...

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