Gaunt trees of white ebony
Liquorice sky over amber clouds
Black hills rolling over a naked eye
Dusty old portraits keeping watch
As patchwork teddy bears
With misshapen eyes
Drags boxes of lost buttons
To their rickety houses
While discoloured mannequins
Tend to their rock gardens
Enjoying the unsettling breeze
Of unwanted dreams
Before the rain, brings fresh sympathy.
Home to lost memories
Long grasses of misspent youth
A place that is not for them
But where they find themselves
Rich in the echoes of forgotten lives
Old candles melting sentiment
Behind each broken door is a tender moment
Undiscovered truth in unopened boxes
An unfinished work, ready to be admired
Where no tune is too short to be sung
It welcomes the unwanted misfits
The discarded, undesirable, the left behind
A place where beauty is never defined.
The dead occasionally wander barefoot
Through the lands of the unwanted
Seeking solace in the familiar
Finding old hopes, hanging from ebony branches
Dreams passing with the changing wind
Clothes lines with old socks catching
Fragments of old lives fallen through pockets
Kindness lingering from thatched houses
The horizon melting away in purple pastels
The dead wonder if they might find themselves here
Not aware that its merely a footstep
A moment returned to them
Before passing into the realms of the restless.
Attachment is lost to the wandering eye
A special comfort rests upon this land
Truth always a companion in solitude
The path is clearly shown by odd bits of string
Guiding each teddy bear to its final home
No new resident can be too forgotten, strange or different
All welcomed by a covenant, a legacy of junk:
‘Never wasted or forgotten
Never lonely or apart
Always seen, and so familiar
A hand to hold another'
A place with little extravagance
But certainly, the most welcoming home.