…they’re out there…small ghosts who never knew
when enough was enough. – Lawrence Raab
You don’t want to believe the stories,
but can’t help thinking about them
tonight—especially at two a.m.—
not a soul out on Main Street, avenue
glistening from an all day rain. Lampposts
glowing with pale auras. There’s something about
the shadows lurking around the fountain
in Kellogg Park, leafless trees, deserted
storefronts, as if the wind sketches in charcoal.
Priests say their rectory is haunted—over
a hundred years now, likely Ebenezer Penniman
who built it—his presence knocking on walls,
odd sounds in empty rooms. An eerie fog
rises from Tonquish Creek, named after Chief
Tonquish, killed in 1819 trying to save his son
when soldiers attacked. The waters overflowed
their banks in 1978. Who’s to say that flood
wasn’t payback? A smoky mist hovers, a revenant
over the neglected Wilcox house. Jack’s spirit,
they say, keeps a vigil upstairs—his figure
appearing, disappearing from an upstairs
window. Locals think the old homestead
was cursed when the next owner ignored
his contract to save Jack’s beloved beech tree.
This is what you think about in the cold dark when
you feel anything is possible—the air troubling
those rooms—wrecked balcony, broken promise,
my quiet footfalls, the overgrown trail outback.
