By Charles M. Sumid     Copyright 2025     Written 2009

For nineteen years
I drove past stone walls
going nowhere.

Then one July morning,
Virginia creeper traced every edge.

The vines weren’t covering.
They were underlining
the mason’s decisions,
how each wall knew where to stop.

Come winter.
Snow outlined every absence,
turned negative space into geometry.

I stopped the car.
Limestone walls,
each block fitted so well
that after a century
they still held their line.

Inside, trees had grown
where the living room was.
The floor returned to earth,
but light fell in each roofless chamber,
marking the old rooms.

Now I slow each time,
watching seasons dress
and undress these stones.

What I thought was decay
was subtraction.
The building becoming more itself
by losing
its roof, its walls,
its separation from the woods.

The essential remains.
Mason’s proportions
freed from duty,
revealed by weather,
underlined by vines.