Across the road a farm lane runs north to the grey ruins of a once grand Victorian farmhouse. An overgrown hedge hides broken-down porches. On the ground in front rest two fallen columns, memorials to past grandeur. Inside, doorways and windows are trimmed with elaborate molding, the paint cracked and peeling. Floral wallpaper hangs in tatters on the walls of empty rooms. Bits of newspaper, nutshells and seeds, litter the floor beneath cracked plaster. Open doors and windows stare out at apple trees overgrown with grapevines. The smell is of decay, forgotten names, lost hope, and vague but lingering memories.
On a summer evening I sit in my studio and hear the distant barking of a dog, the rhythmic sound of insects. The dying breeze stirs murmuring voices in the willow outside. The voices are from the past, intangible, poised at the edge of a void yet never filling it. That void is in me, linking the past to the future, briefly rendered, but not stopped.