Ghost Houses

The car rumbled down the road, straight and true to the forever-long stretch of pavement.  All the world passed by with dizzying speed.  A blue canvas sky, painted from horizon to horizon, was splattered with white clouds.  An army of tall, erect corn stalks stood silently waiting to fight the losing battle against the coming harvest.  And then there were the ghost houses.

They sat at the edge of the lonely road, with weeping windows, and sobbing doors.  Glass panes had long been shattered, and the doors were struggling to hold to their places.  The roofs were sunk and bent from years of resistance to the enemy winds and rains.  The trees and weeds had come to comfort the sunken husk, but finding no way to provide consolation, waited with drooping heads and sighing bows. 

The car passed by the little ghost houses to quickly, to fast to see the extent of what the houses endured.  Suddenly the window was filled again with soldier-corn, and picture-perfect sky.  I longed to see the little ghosts again.  Their mournful eyes full of broken glass tears, pierced my heart like a million shards of crystal.

As we traveled on towards our destination, down the long, empty roads, into a sunset of painted canvas, tiny splashes of mist fell.  The heavens were crying, drops of empathetic tears falling to earth, to fall on the sad, lonely earth. 

The weeds picked up their tired heads, and the trees danced in the wind.  They would do what I could not; walk amongst the abandoned houses, support their breaking, broken backs, and whisper songs of older days, and times when hope dwelled within.  

I envied the weeds, I envied the trees, but I wished them luck and strength.  And forever, when I look to those roads, to the defeated armies of stout-hearted corn, to the ever changing canvas of lovely blue and lovely white, I shall also remember the tired houses, the longing houses, the little ghost houses.