Graceful Negligence

As a young person, I spent a lot of time in abandoned buildings poking around. I considered driving off to see collapsing barns and old houses an afternoon well spent.  I still do.  I am curious to see what happens when structures are left untouched, when organic change reclaims them.  I love the comingling dialogue between human and nature.  I am drawn to images of vitality that speak through the process of change and decay.  This poem is a work in progress exploring the potential of leaving things untouched in order to understand how life works.

Graceful Negligence

Living amid the wonder of

slight
architectural errors
in houses built on shifting
bedrock,
I smile.

With time the kitchen
drifts into a small
slope,
one I can roll a marble down.

I love this,

unexplained negligence,
the what if
time passes and….
scenario.

Of course the times goes,

who would have thought
any different?                                          

But what if…

what if
We had the patience to allow
graceful negligence to
settle in,
And the heart
to bear witness?

Imagine feral patterns

reclaiming their orgin,
imprinting our memory-
star seeds of
unmeddled affairs.

Allison Distler