I go there more often of late
without much forethought,
Follow down the yellow corridors
stone and cold and swept to a shine
by dusters on cloistered feet.
Past the hall, echoing songs, a ballet class
films on winter evenings.
Drawn to the smell of laundry, lines of it
hung to the ceiling. Uniform.
There too the high stairs fly,
linoleumed for foot stepping hordes
the chambered passageways untroubled.
Just rooms of words spelled haltingly
the hum of sewing and sums
boxed in their tables
murmured out like mantras.
And higher still, neat rows of beds
curtained with ghosts that rock
gently to and fro, with no one to see.
There I never go now but turn away,
out past the kitchen garden, hedged
sweet with privet flowers and nests
through the door where all the little children
sat, all in brown with a sacred heart
pinned to their chest
or ran, swung, skipped to songs
and threw sand, crying and laughing
in the four walled concrete playground.
Bulldozers broke the hermitic convent door
red bricks tumbled, burying an incensed chapel,
the sick bay, kitchens, a rose garden
so too the grotto where snails painted
pretty whirls on pale shells.
I go there more often of late
just to rebuild.
For her Poetics prompt: Buildings, Kim prompts us to write a poem conjuring one, piece by piece
PoetryPix 
This is a mysterious building for me, it sounds very much like an orphanage, but to me they are distant in the past… it is haunting, and I can sense the past in your poem so strong (and probably my vision is clouded by having read Dickens a bit too much)
i enjoyed doing the slow reveal and yes it is laden with the past – not quite an orphanage but maybe some of that feeling in my boarding school ar age 5!
What an edifice of memories, Laura! I love how your poem appeals to the senses, such as the ‘…yellow corridors / stone and cold and swept to a shine / by dusters on cloistered feet’ and the ‘smell of laundry, lines of it / hung to the ceiling’. These lines reminded me of my old grammar school:
‘Just rooms of words spelled haltingly
the hum of sewing and sums
boxed in their tables
murmured out like mantras.’
But the neat rows of beds suggest boarders. The reveal in the final stanza, the bulldozers breaking the hermitic convent door,’ is quite a shock, and the final lines are poignant.
thank you Kim for all your appreciation and the prompt that took me back down the years to my convent boarding school
My pleasure, Laura.
A beautiful, sad poem of what seems like childhood memories.
yes Shirley – nostalgia at what it all was once
“just rooms of words” but so much contained between them. (K)
thankyou for reading all the other words
I love the details of the convent, from the beds to the kitchen. That last stanza just broke my heart.
it is sad to see our pasts literally destroyed brick by brick – thank you Grace
For all the long tale, where I rest are these last two lines.
I go there more often of late / just to rebuild.
and that takes us back to beginning – nostalgia is a kind of round trip
A well written “slow reveal”, the rows of beds, the sacred hearts pins to chest… that one took me back to catechism, the May Day crowning, and so forth.
thank you Yvonne – some shared memories evidently
The edifice of memories holds so much–torn down and rebuilt. Remembered.
indeed it was such an edifice for me Merril
The scenery through your verse is both whimsical and eerie, definitely provokes a feeling – which to me is a best way to ‘experience’ a place through writing.
thank you for feeling the experience in your reading of this poem
I did for a bit find myself wandering through a remembered reading of “Little Woman”
interesting
“cloistered” does point to a convent and “sacred heart” pinned to chest makes me believe you are writing about a convent boarding school. I love the slow reveal and the poignant ending.
spot on and you picked up on that first clue in this reveal
🙂
I apprciate how the mystery of this building unfolds and how you go to the ruins “to rebuild”. Glad to read your work again, Laura!
thank you Lynn – am back after a welcome break
I felt a sadness at the loss of the building, but also a sadness of it’s purpose (school wasn’t my fave place to be), an era now lost, a sense of mortality and review comes through for me.
sad indeed Paul – the destruction, the way our lives have drifted into something called the past, school days when all was in potential – and here we are now looking back…. looking forward?
Yes, just so, but if only it weren’t.
I started school at 4 and half. At a convent. That school is long gone, more houses for Camps Bay. The convent itself in the next suburb, is now a shopping mall.
But there is still an active convent school in our next suburb here.
No boarders tho.
a touch of parallel lives for us then Diana
p.s. love your latest avatar post-holiday