Uploaded on June 13, 2011
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grapevines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folks are
Who share the unlit place with me —
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad —
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
–Robert Frost
in Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost
I really like this poem, but I didn’t quite get it at first. A subsequent reading or two got the lightbulb to glow: Ghosts! He’s writing about ghosts! Yes, I know that the title contains the word “ghost,” but still. Anyway, I didn’t know how to photograph ghosts (and have never wanted to), but the broken concrete wall that keeps the upper yard out of the lower driveway seemed like it would work for giving an idea of an abandoned place. The steps, of course, needed to be included. They just go from the lower driveway to the upper, but you wouldn’t know that from the little I included in the frame. Art gives us control, or at least, the illusion of control, and sometimes, that’s all we really need.