Ohio Ghosts
They seep from
long fissured asphalt,
and plaster cracked years.
Hollow houses, boards rotted
by the chew and gnaw of prying winds,
old-time forgotten burgs
lost now within a retreating landscape.
They used to thrive in a hard-scabble way,
used to be owners of hunting hounds
the daughter’s offspring of grit-hardened men,
blood kin to the furnace and the fields.
Both factory and Mill printed a community
upon long dusty summers,
winter launched many a lunch-pail march
and it was good in its bench-made way.
It all fell away so swiftly,
a bottom line in a thick read ledger
scratched through.
Thereafter great-grandparents
were buried in tall clocks,
then carted away upon jumbled flatbeds.
Piece by piece small towns were sold
for pennies - their very own, well-worn,
long spent pennies.
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