Buzzard House

By John I. Blair

Roaming through the Ozarks
On a stony country road
I drove around a corner
And saw a sagging farmhouse

Subsiding slow into a meadow
Where goldenrod grew tall,
Wild roses graced the fence lines
And spiderwort was blooming.

The kitchen porch had rotted,
Stained siding grown so thin
I could detect the framing
Poking through its clapboard skin.

An old clematis draped the gable,
Soon to flash its purple glories
Where none except the idle
Or preoccupied would see.

But what transfixed me as I stopped,
Gaping at the spectral sight –
A row of buzzards on the roof
Who’d spread their wings for warmth.

They stared at me, I at them,
Met there in the countryside
Beneath the bright Missouri sun
To mourn the death of someone’s home.

It troubled me to contemplate
How useless we all were;
I could not stay the hands of time;
They could not pick the bones.

©2010 John I. Blair