HIDDEN DRIVEWAY

There’s no standing
in the silence
of a hidden driveway.

Only the lonely
have the key to get in
to a house with a sagging roof
and a door hanging
on a rusted hinge.

Blue potatoes, red cabbage,
rutabaga and kohlrabi
lie buried in the root cellar
for a winter that never ends.

Microscopic mites
slide up and down
in frozen rivulets.

Stairs creak and mice scurry
as a hunched body
with petrified skin
and stone-cold feet
coughs and spits
his way up to the stillness
of an empty room

that no one ever knocks on
and no one ever says:

“Come in.”