The Time For Specters To Walk

I do not know why Specters walk in solemn procession on the cool nights of Autumn, and always in places where they lived and loved and suffered or breathed the last breath of life. It would seem, that, even in death, they seek those familiar places. They pass among the living with a single mind to touch their past. I can understand that very well. How I wish I could show them my sympathy for the depth of feeling that surely compels them. Those of us among the living move through our lives without love for the concrete and stone we daily trod. But these know and have a connection to what lies beneath our paths of indifferent scurrying like mice along the buildings of city streets. If they made themselves known to us, how wonderful that would be, and how much we could share of their past, when they walked along long buried streets lined with the warm glow of lamp-lit houses. Would our imagination be transported to view a colonnade of the occupying blue troops? Would our Southern blood boil at the thought, and weep for stories of their loved ones whose faces were too soon covered by acrid earth? And then, with a melancholy smile, would our guest slowly fade as a mist in the morning Sun? And, as for me, I wait in anticipation of each Autumn evening and hope to see my guest again.