How proudly she had faced each dawn
Whether fair or cold or raining
A memorial to her dwellers gone
A haven to those remaining.
A man walked slowly up her steps
As he often had before
To touch the precious things he kept
To look around once more.
He settled in an old porch chair
And smelled her aging timbers
He could always find a solace there
To rest, and just remember.
He gazed toward the old gray barn
Now bent on sagging beams
And thought of days he'd worked the farm
And tended crops with harness teams.
He could hear the clink of iron trace-chains
And the creak of straining leather
He could see the tossing of their manes
As his horses pulled together.
How swiftly years had come and gone
He mused, as his thoughts expanded
On things gone right and things gone wrong
That life, to him, had handed.
He closed his eyes as a sparrow sung
Yet, scarcely was he sleeping
For the harp of his memory softly strummed
And the past came gently creeping.
Like echos from a shouting horn
Came laughter mixed with crying
The happiness o'er the children born
The grief o'er the old folks dying.
The clanging toll of the dinner bell
The workhands called to eat
The pully squeak on the old porch well
And the patter of little feet.
A rooster's crow at the morning sky
The sound of skillets frying
And a mother's evening lullabye
To hush her baby's crying.
Vision after vision skipped
From his boyhood up 'til now
Causing smiles to play across his lips
Causing furrows on his brow.
At last the graveyard came into view
Where those he missed now slept
How he yearned to see, and touch them, too
At last, the old man wept.
Not just a common shelter
For his children and his wife
This home had been his castle
The fortress in his life.
He could not hold his quivering chin
Nor the tears that lined his face
And a sudden prayer gushed from within
"God keep my old homeplace..."
