Old Farmhouses

OLD FARM HOUSES © 2008 Annie Otness


Old farmhouses like tatty grandmothers,
roofs, incontinent to the rains,
windows blind and lightless, the memories hidden.
Populated with the vermin of scuttling hungers,
That hide beneath their disintegrating verandahs,
like old relatives that are never visited.
Beyond repair, old fashioned beyond quaintness
not antique for value, not historic,
yet can't be put down, waiting to sink into the earth,
but still erect although tottering,
reminding the new farmhouses where they came from.