There’s an old farmhouse that creeks Its big rooms hard to heat in the wintertime With a chimney from 1802 On the edge of a neglected orchard My grandpa planted and tended to On the edge of a two -lane highway That was a horse trail And then a dirt road And now an interstate With mountain views And a big front porch And a kitchen with butternut cabinets My yiayia would pull pyrex from and cook in Dishes she’d learned From her mother who read tea leaves Back in Greece Before she came to America hoping that each of us Might have a better life And it’s been hard but I know that we did With a ceiling that once fell down When my father was playing the drums (he is where I get it from) And my grandpa laughed and kept reading the paper With plaster in his coffee Where yellow roses bloomed outside the window Inexplicably well and still do
Ashely Sofia Polihronakis is a singer-songwriter and storyteller from the Adirondacks living in Nashville, Tennessee. She is currently working on her first novel.