In my blindness
I still see the footsteps
Of abandonment.
There are not enough trees
To hide every decaying
House of home-mined red bricks
Nor enough vines
To drag any to the ground
Fast enough.

The rough yellow house
Built with used firebrick
Dug from the crumbling
Glassplant furnace
Eyes the rust-red factory walls
Remembering.
I have traded eyes,
Its for mine, remembering
Trading sunlight for vines.

8/21/84

Appeared in Hill & Valley, vol. 7, no. 8, March 1985

Index    The Goff Mansion