Esther Louise Arbuthnot

ESTHER LOUISE ARBUTHNOT'S PHOTOGRAPH - Taken about 1876 or so Great great great (?) Grandmother (My own mother was named after her) While the rain is falling gently on the roof it makes the sound of a time that's long forgotten though it seems to hang around I can hear you breathing lightly from an Celtic dream I've known it has come to Pennsylvania where you've found me here alone and I can feel you when you cry. So far from home, you wonder why, and it makes me want to die. All the way from County Down there was a dream you had to find you were long ago and far away, but always on my mind, in your photograph your eyes are reaching out perhaps for me, I can feel you when I see you but I never really see, what makes you think you have to cry? You must have known I'd wonder why, Yet it makes me want to die. Can you hear the raindrops falling? County Down's so far away, or perhaps it's just forgotten, like a dreary Celtic day, I can feel it when you're smiling, in the Heaven of your eyes, love is gone before you know it, and it's then I realize, it's made you think you have to cry. And through it all, not wonder why, I will never let you die. © Ron wilson aka vee bdosa the doylestown poet Basically the events of the poem are history, although Esther Louise Arbuthnot was not actually born in Scotland. I just took a little poet's privilege and the poem in its entirity came from observing the beauty of her photograph.