THE OLD ABANDONED FARMHOUSE

By Thurman W. Adams

©2002. Thurman W. Adams

Up a long lane, in the middle of a field, sits an old abandoned farmhouse,
its front door gone, boards falling to the ground and the windows, now all broken.
Nothing lives there anymore, except for maybe the occasional mouse, in a once beautiful home of which it is now just a token.

The paint is almost gone, the place, just in shambles,
your mind guessing who lived there, what it was like new.
Thinking of what it once must have been, your mind wonders and rambles.
Who was born there and who there died, the answers are now few.

As I muse and reflect, going back over one hundred years,
I can see children in the yard, playing in the shade,
parents telling family stories, the kinds one usually hears,
what was it really like, the story, to us, will probably evade.

I can see the family gathered in the parlor at night,
father and mother in their chairs, children on the floor,
a small cloth covered table, a family bible, a smoky kerosene light, father reading aloud or telling tales, the children always wanting more.

A century ago, things were not so comfortable as they once did seem hot in the summer, cold in winter, a coal or wood fire.
Time has a way of making us forget the bad, only of the good do we dream.
We think of the home fife then, wanting to return, but it is not the truth, it being dire.

Oh, to see the old farmhouse restored and brought back to what it used to be.
The ghosts of all the people, who there once lived, could not ask for more.
As the spirits of times gone by, this is what I am sure they would want to see,
as night falls, father getting up from his porch chair, walking into his farmhouse, closing the door.