won’t be seen on the glossy
pages of decorator magazines,
where the eye grows accustomed
to a certain color balance,
the confident staging of the flower arrangement 
on just the right end-table, the rich
but modest sofa, Windsor chair
no one will sit in for very long.
And who’s to blame the eye
that can’t see past some cracks
in the century-old plaster walls, recoils
at water stains, holes in the ceiling?
The roof line of that old Victorian
is sagging now, appealing only to
a few eccentric photographers.
They walk the hardwood floors
worn bare, admire the carved
but wobbly newel post, 
the elegance of the claw foot tub
stained with rust.
It isn’t easy to see,
the dignity of old houses.
It needs a certain angle,
a careful distance 
in the slanting 
evening light.
                        

You think there’s something there, 
in the old barn, its roof
sagging in the middle, one wall
collapsing inward. 
How is it that a ruin 
can arouse your curiosity?
You would not stable horses 
in such dilapidation, or ask the cows
to spend even one night.
You know the risk you take now
setting your feet on rotting planks,
looking for you know not what.
The past, perhaps? The last year
that tractor rusting in the corner
came to life and chugged off,
filling the air with blue exhaust? 
The old things, the harness, 
black leather cracking,
pitchfork attached by spiders
to a post, and clumps of hay 
scattered everywhere – 
these have the dignity of age. 
Age has its privileges
and the privilege of collapsing barns 
could be this stillness.
They have earned their independence, 
no longer need anything except to sit
with broken tools in the gathering dust,
feeling no obligation
to satisfy anyone’s curiosity.