Lessons from old houses

The old houses are still standing in those towns
A century or more of memory, few good

Thick dust pours from every crack
Dead with past subsistence
Alive with warning of wasting lives
The timeless struggle before death

Houses were made of lumber back then
Actual lumber, from trees
Built to last centuries
Warehouse generations of cheap labor

They appear sad from the front
To remind adults that live there
that their fates are sealed
destined for dust

Who owns who? The house have seen their kind
Watched them decay from young and vibrant
To old and broken and dying,
Decade by decade, generation by generation

Walk those streets today and see
The generations turned to dust and vague memory
Struggles that led nowhere
Old dreams that died, whether realized or not

Remember all those that pinned their existence
To “owning” those houses, laboring decades
They’re all gone, but the houses remain
To trap more into laboring decades for the house that’ll outlast

The streets are filled with warnings
Lifetimes of struggle and savings
Leave nothing when all’s said and done
When existence is wasted