Our House

I remember how we came

with the excitement of explorers,

the wild high pitch of our elation

echoing through each empty room.

There were spaces we could fill:

the root cellar, the attic’s secret passage,

the upstairs closets,

narrow and useless as they were.

It has no secrets left to yield, this house

we once inhabited. Now abandoned,

chilled walls cracked,

penetrated by silent frost.

Outside, blank windowpanes reflect

the sky’s striations.

The frozen fingers of the lilacs reach,

expecting nothing.




Carla Ganiel

Not only does this abandoned house have an abandoned boat in the front yard, so too does it have the small, graphite colored satellite dish perched on the roof of the barn. Peru.


submitted by Karolyn Buotte

After the atomic bomb exploded at a test site just outside Talmadge, Maine military scientists in charge of examining the remains of the various structures found near total devastation and destruction of the area. Appliances evaporated into thin air, the trees outside stood like frail blackened skeletons, and the porcelain bathtub was reduced to a pile of fine grain powder on the bathroom floor. All that remained intact was the family television. Kill your television? Good luck.


photo by Joe McLaughlin

As I was going for a "run" late fall 2008, I stopped to look at this barn that has always been a few hundred feet from my house. I decided to investigate. It wasn't as raggedy as I expected, but the boards on the outside are beginning to become inutile. This moment went from a run to get back into shape into a Maine wilderness adventure.


Submitted by Jill Schnorr

This one is at least 100 years old and located in North Bridgton. Abandoned? Well, sort of, for seven months of the year. The rest of the year (June-October) we are delighted to be in residence.
Photo submitted by Peter McClelland

This 1880s picture is of the "Stone Farm" site in Andover, Maine, one mile or so up the road to the right of the Ethan Allen mill. The Poor family is shown with Lister Poor sitting in the chair. The house seems to have been built on the site of a barn, given the heavy granite slabs sloping up under the porch. One of Poor's ancestors helped bring the railroads to Maine and another became the "Poor" in Standard and Poor's. His descendants were guides in the Rangeley Lakes during the heyday of the out-of-state "Sports" trekking to Maine for some of the world's best fishing. The appellation "Stone Farm" was given to a successor house on this same site, made of granite, still standing today.
photo submitted by Peter Stowell, courtesy of Archer Poor, Jr., Andover, Maine.

empty

The house is empty. It has a lot of life left in it, it looks like someone loved it and kept it.
There is a cord of wood stacked behind the house. Someone plows it out.
But it is empty for sure.
Byron.

the attic window

Winter at the historical society. This was the attic, where I could see my breath. Everything was as still as a Wyeth painting.
Everything in this house was old.
Dixfield.

litte red house

Once upon a time a very tidy red house in a very tidy little town.
Used as a shed or a playhouse maybe.
Obvious needing new paint.
Dixfield.