There’s a taste of rubble in the air,

of the brick dust that an old house

in decline, stooping towards memoriam

and grave side recollections, of times when

the happiness and tired old peculiar

went hand in hand, that the walls become sensitive

to the slightest knock and the whisper of the gradual

and inevitable to come; it is in that taste of rubble,

of brick dust, hanging wires and a couch past its best

but hugged in the dead of night when sleep

evades the would be dreamer,

that’s the memory of home.

Ian D. Hall 2016