The Swisher House

My parent's flight got in late last week so I took a little hike in their truck down the gravel roads a couple miles to where we used to live. Things are so different out there. 3 more houses have burned down (weird, right?). The neighbors up the road's property has become a storage/junk yard for farm machinery. The little farmer down the road plowed down the house and made it into a field. Trees aren't the same. The fence around our yard was gone.
I love that little house for what it was. The haven of my childhood. I had such happy memories there, so much of who I am grew in that house and in the barns and fields surrounding it. So I wrote this.


The Swisher House

There used to be a tree in that ditch a quarter mile down
and i imagined a badger lived there
or sotmimes made it into my fort
And we used to hang ropes off of the cypress trees
   to make them into swings.
The gravel was thicker, and all the walls were whiter on those barns
The corn cribs' door stood open for us and we'd climb into the rafters

There used to be a fence around the yard that kept the dog from chasing cars
And there used to be children and goats and cows and pigs
     Dad's '77 truck parked in the driveway
and the grass was always mowed
and it seemed to me
things used to be a lot less close.

Now the quiet farm rests in the final hours of its years
the days passing around
as the weeds and wild grow higher
Driving by I get the feeling it hasn't seen kids in a while
No grass forts or campfires
    or bare feet running through the sprinkler.
It looks so much smaller
   yet still so familiar.
And I can still cast a glance out the window and hear
  the mewing of brand new baby cats
   and the howling barn dog
   the pigs sqealing in the barn
My brothers and me and all those years
  of quiet cold nights
  and slow summer days
  and tractors and horses and games in the grove
The world fresh and wide
Me and my imagination running wild.