Concord Massachusetts Passingways
Haunted...
glowing foot falls on the dusted wooden planks cross the bridge
following them
I swing around enormous trees
skirt quickly...trying to catch up
were we holding hands as we walked
...did we hold hands?
I can't recall
but the muster of us like the gun smoke
infiltrates the air here
murmurs
rattlings like tiny marbles on a wooden floor
up the circular stairs ...down a long hall
in an old house
rustles and sweepings
...fabric moving gently in the wind
like a wash line of cotton sheets and t shirts
overlooking a golden barley field
(I see you in a white crew neck ...a softly worn one
your jeans falling slimly from your hip bones)
but really you wore an unlikely peach polo and jean shorts
There it is again!
...did you hear it?!
I know I just saw....felt ...heard...
the water
runs gently beneath the bridge
almost silent
unless you strain to hear it's ghostly whispers
murmurs ..murmurs...that is what we are
even the light seems to fall around our shadows and part
...in our revenant wake
our words cling and stir
milling about...like a cocktail hour of youthful flirtations
meshing with the sounds of flying musket balls and scrambling men
their feet scrapping the dirt and grass of the hill
as the scrabble desperately upward
fear is here ...the dust is unsettled
thousands ...so many thousands
passing daily over this bridge...walking the same path up
I love those English gardens up on the hill
...even as they are falling to crumble
aged perennial beds
the gate hanging askew ...rusting
gracious with age and elegance
yes...thread bare like a hand-hewn oriental rug flung down
a century or more ago in a noble house
never cleaned or moved again
I venture to the rock stairs down the secret passageways
...beneath laurel and rhododendron
then resting...a leaf floats by
but my psychic shoulders
are so jostled by so many leftings
there is barely room for me
So I recall another day...across town
two people in a field
small summer bugs whiz around them
lofting in heat drafts
...I strain to see
catch only the flickering rerun
they are on the board walk...that traverses the swampland
... hidden by drapes of green vines
they kiss
but he withdraws and withdraws again
she is left so hungry...a hunger that will never leave her
it dents the space...embeds it
like the embedded musket balls in the house across the street
from the Bridge
the ghosts so many and just one
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