Ingrid Showalter Swift | + Follow Poet |
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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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Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2015

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