MERCURIAL...

A house. Forsaken, at the edge of an overgrown path. An ocean at its doorstep. A lost field of dry grass.  A slumbering mercurial night. Wind washed, in the rain. The rain, rain, rain…

 Forest tendrils dripped and dragged forlorn roots. Muddy steps, torn and smothered.  Waiting alone beside an iron gate, exposed.  It swung like a child’s swing, on rusted hinges.

Effortless footfalls from long ago. Perhaps hundreds of 

them. Over those broken stairs that led to even more broken 

doors.  In the rain. That sweet, endless rain. 

                     

Green moss, resembling old man hairpieces, slid down its 

broken shingles. Cracked drainpipes rattled like rocky waterfalls. 

Hawks, enviable raptors of the forest, sat in damp feathers, 

on the roof peaks, calling to each other.  Dawn was about to 

break. Their amber eyes scanning. The hunt was about to begin.

A house, cold now, in the last vestiges of winter, longed for 

warmth. Fields parched and barren stretched beyond its border. 

                             

Muffled rooms, framed by broken glass windows. A great 

silence, except for 

the froth and bubble of wet drapes flapping in their wake. 

A neglected stone fireplace emitted its final embers before ceasing to function.  Someone had been there. Someone, in the murky hours. Someone passing by.

Ashes covered the broken hearth.  The house breathed 

heavily. It remembered. Woken at last by starlight in the old 

fire. It remembered what it was like before winter’s frigid goodbye.

                                    

Someone had lit the fire. Alone in the cold. Then wrapped in the old drapes, had sat before its low flames. Smoke drifted through the vacant rooms.

  

A house, neither grand or new, sat peacefully in the silvery quiet of the morning.  Once, long ago, mortal souls walked and lived in this place. 

Time pondered. In the rain. Waiting for Someone. 

The rain gurgled, then dwindled, drenching the house while it waited. In the rain.

Photographs 2026