Hillside Lessons

The hillside is yawning. Its mouth is a doorway, a place through which people once passed. The shed is empty now. Thus we stare at the past in the present, and we know that something is gone from us.

Abandonment is simple enough. We pack up, move on. Life takes us elsewhere. But the hillside does not abandon: it goes on being a hill. It lets life be. Stonework and gabled roof withdraw into it, ever warier of humankind.

The building is a memento of something once known. It lets the wind and water in these days, rejoicing in weather. Upon it and around it, a chorus of turf: green the grass grows yearly.