Ghost Houses of the Prairies by Dave McKane

Irish Photographer Dave McKane was exposed to the Kansas plains as an exchange student at Hutchinson High School in 1978. His love of the area continues as he works to document the "ghost houses" of the prairie. Dave is featured in my story on Pollard, Kansas. He is work is awesome - he is very talented! I love it that he has a passion for rural Kansas and visits here a few times every year.

And I love the photo he took of the house just outside the dead town of Pollard in Rice County. Here is a photo from his website.
http://www.davemckanearts.com/folios/folio1.html

Ghost houses of the prairies    

Eventually

clouds roll in

filling big, blue skies

full of darkness and lightning

worrying the lifeless farmhouses beneath

like icebergs rushing headlong

towards the Titanic

1941, 1961, 1981

how long since

beds were made

stoves fired up

living room floors kissed

by straw brooms?

Now

screens that once protected windows

hang at crazy angles

flapping dangerously

in a prairie wind

that rushes down from Canada to the Gulf

but fails to move windmills

which resist raising water

no longer needed

for families long since left

Dwellings built with pride

detailed with love

no longer filled with children’s chatter

slowly sink

into the prairie that was once a sea

waiting patiently

for the earth

to take them back

Irish Photographer Dave McKane