Ghost Walk

I went on a ghost walk today.

The March wind pushed me forward.

First to Miss Vera’s House.

Miss Vera,

Who taught me 2^nd and 3^rd grade.

A neighbor,

Whose daughter was one of my mother’s best friends in Seaboard’s halcyon days.

She was a Grand Southern Woman who settled me into reading,

Who click clacked on the wooden classroom floor

In shoes a size too small.

Her house, once also a Grand Southern Dame, soon to be torn down for a tractor store next door.

I snapped the jonquils still blooming.

Who planted them and when?

I snapped her back doorknob, a crystal beauty that beckoned my childish hands many times.

Then the ghost wind pushed me further, to grandma’s house nearby.

Where Maggie and Edward lived, and before them maiden aunts Lillian and Eva.

The doors and knobs were old friends too.

And many a bright day I banged them open and called out to whoever was inside.

One didn’t knock,

One banged and called 

“It’s me!”

And still those doors reach out to take me back.

But a funny thing,

Around the decaying house the daffodils still bloom,

Whipped about by a great spring wind, but bursting still.

Brilliant yellow,

Straight and tall beside a crumbling house.

And all around Camellias and Forsythias and Japanese quince

Ask “remember when?”

But also reassure me that life begins again

In Spring.

Jonquils at Miss Vera's House

Back Door Knob at Miss Vera's House

Key at Grandma's Back Door

Grandma's Side Door

Daffodils at Grandma's Side Door 

Red Camilla at Grandma's

White Camilla at Grandma's House

Forsythia at Grandma's House