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 --