Greenwood Farms

There was on this land sprawling acreage

Leafy green trees, rooted deep

Horses, cattle, and farm cats running free

Beneath behemoth oak trees a white wooden house

Interior walls painted by hand, depicting weeping willows and birds

And their chaotic, interwoven nests

In summertime, voices reverberate between wooden beams

As children hide within peculiar rooms and hidden spaces before taking

To neighboring hills, whose mild slopes provide unspoiled panoramas

Nothing but raw earth

Time clicks on, willing change

Papers are drawn to inhibit the freedom of this place

Little by little, the terrain spoils

Oak trees lining quiet streams become backyards of eerily familiar homes

Red brick

Perfectly squared, manicured lawns

Atop the hill refuge etches away until there exists but one view: people, houses,

Man’s insistent sprawl

No horses roam free

Nor cattle

Nor cats, dogs, or children

Decades pass and children helplessly grow into adults

Less frequent are their family gatherings

Memorialized by fading photographs

Tacked into cracked, rotting walls

When finally the homestead is sold, and with it every last acre of land

The children, now grown, dream of its rolling hills

Where they played beneath maypoles, built forts and skidded bicycles on gravel roads

The city’s expanding reach compounds their longing

For days when man encountered

Fewer homes

And stores

And superfluous manmade things that overwhelm the place where stood their quiet haven

One day, a woman makes pilgrimage to this place of bound recollection

Many years have passed since she joined her family here within

The farm’s white, bold, stone gates

Inside, as if time stood still, or turned upon itself, is her grandparents’ house

Intact

Vacant

Holding within its joyous halls dust and faint etchings

And ghosts, of what used to be, and what could have been

Before long, this house will fall, its stones recycled to build more structures

And liberate more space

That we might all have less