The Condemned House Poem by Leo Yankevich

(After a Black & White Photograph by Jared Carter)

Who alive remembers who lived there
seventy years ago? A family
of WASPS set in their ways? The leafless tree
in front was just a sapling then. Despair
did not weigh heavy on the owner’s brow,
a man who paid his taxes, loved his wife,
and who in ‘44 gave up his life
for freedom. Who today cares or knows how?
And now the house is boarded up, its last
tenants peddlers of cheap crack cocaine,
its naked boards exposed to elements,
its roof’s tar-paper caught in the grey blast,
around it dirty snow, above it rain.
The photo knows itself what it laments.