Their Window

Dust rimed glass, a rickety old sash,
Inside a broken frame,
With crackled, yellowed peeling paint
That somehow still remains.

The wall that holds this ancient work
Leans southward, quite a bit,
As though some cold, delinquent wind
Has tried to topple it.

But though the child has tried his best
To blow the old borne down,
Some force of nature, Providence?
Has kept it off the ground.

I viewed this rustic, leaning shack
With its single dingy glass,
And pondered on its occupants,
Were they too, of the past?

Or had they left just yesterday,
On some essential trip,
Returning to the window’s light,
To sit and laugh by it?

Perhaps I caught a movement.
Perhaps there was a sound.
A stillness, yet with living breath,
Was someone still around?

Had they never left at all,
Was I too dull to see
The spirits of a distant time
Inside, and watching me?

I stepped inside the dreary shed
And wiped the sullied glass,
To view another person’s view
To see another’s past.

I peered outside upon a world
That others once had know,
And wished, if only for a nod,
That it could be my own.