My dream house

The Farmhouse by Reed Whittemore Our house is an old farmhouse, whose properties The town has gradually purchased, leaving it Only a city lot and a few trees Of all that wood and busheldom and breeze It once served. It is high and square, And its lines, such as they are, have been muddled by several Conflicting remodelers, whose care In widening, lengthening, adding on, letting in air Has left it with four kinds of windows, three porches And a door that leads to a closet that is not there. The city houses around us have borrowed from verse And the Old Dominion; their cosmopolitan Muddle is elegant next to ours. We think of moving, and say we'll add no more dollars To those already spent making a box Of what was, is and will be, forever, a box, When there's land. empty and unboxed, down a few blocks. Waiting. We say this as we pull down, pull up, push out And generally persevere with our renovating-- That is, making new again--knowing That houses like our house are not made new again Any more than a man is. All that growing Up and away from the land, that bowing To impersonal social forces that transform Wheat fields into rows of two-bedroom ramblers Must be acknowledged; but the warm Part of our country boy will not form. It remains, behind new windows, doors and porches, Hugging its childhood, staying down on the farm.