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My footsteps echoed the echoes of Time
as through the streets of Salem I walked.
The hour was early and the city still asleep
with only a cat sitting quietly on a cold granite sill,
the sky slowly turning from night into dawn,
my mind still in twilight as my footsteps echoed on.

The Ropes Mansion looked proud
as I strolled Essex Street,
its pediments and roof balustrades all stately,
its fence posts freshly painted
and hydrangea all in bloom.
I faintly heard voices
of a long-ago family
gathered about the hearth
in its fine parlor room.

I passed the Athenaeum 
and hailed this library noble, so renowned
its soaring columns and arched doorway
have welcomed countless seekers of knowledge 
and those sharing the wisdom of learning
and the comfort of reading from volumes well-bound.

Ten generations of Pickerings
have lived in the 1660 house 
situated on 18 Broad.
A descendant, Timothy Pickering
under George Washington had served 
and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis’ sword.
I admired the house’s gables, its unique fence and its posts 
then journeyed along to find more of Olde Salem’s ghosts.

At the Broad Street Cemetery
just steps across the street 
I tipped my hat to those 
who once lived here
now in honest sleep
at the second oldest resting place
in Salem Town.
But I shook my head over the grave
of High Sheriff Corwin of the Witchcraft Trial
beneath his time-weathered obelisk
he must be tossing for all Eternity
in his dank unholy ground.

For the true ghosts of Olde Salem
haunt the air of Proctor’s Ledge
where 19 innocents all
swung in the 1692 breeze
and it was there at the edge
of this hillside they died
overlooking a town
where too many had been tried.

How real was their torture
how sad was their pain
and in their lonely silence
do they relive it all again?
And when it all was over,
all said and all done
Salem would feel cursed
for its unforgivable deeds
that could not be undone,
for as I walk the streets
of Olde Salem
in the still-early morn,
I see their spirits all around me
along these sidewalks old and worn.

Copyright 2020 Gregory Joseph Firlotte
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