This Old House Knows Me Well

This old house painted in faded  pride 
knows me well.  I did not learn to walk here,
but I did learn to leap- and do it mightily.

The old dishes have been broken or thrown away,
replaced by new ones with new owners. The taps 
stiff with old age and rust, surely have been replaced.

The comfortable chairs, the linoleum, the tile,
the shag rugs, the step up altar where my 
mother was married, are probably leveled flat.

I can only see your outside and imagine your 
many renovations in the sawdust of time,   
atticless, cribless,  old beds churning  to new beds,

While I lived there, you were a good soul
who kindly accepted all bidding, and I can see, donated your good bones to other’s  futures.

Other places I have lived have been less generous, tumbling into disarray, illness,  nature’s destruction before I could even build a future in them.  

 I can feel the ill winds blow and know that this new abode will be more of the same, filled with unfated things never settling down into their rightful places.

I thank you, dear old thing, for your graceful love.