There are ghosts here in the North
Country where I live,
those disembodied spirts,
dispossessed, who stayed behind
after the body was buried and the
eulogy finished,
the grieving done, for they still
had work to do,
death unexpected, so they stayed on
into the years to come,
the decades, centuries even, well
beyond time’s reaches;
there were fields to cut before the
storms arrived,
and fences to mend, in need of
repair, patching up,
the fields now, for us, gone to
forest and woods,
the stone fences but rubbled piles
upheaved, fences
that we marvel at, awed by the craftsmanship
and care;
their late autumn crops will have
to wait until the morrow,
for the house needs to be banked
before the winter’s cold
returns and settles in, as it has
for us, looking ahead,
banking our own houses, readying
ourselves, preparing
for the autumn’s cold and winter’s
snows to follow;
and sitting here on the front porch,
looking out,
our hands wrapped around mugs of
late night coffee warming us,
and entwined, laced together, the
night’s silence closes us in,
surrounds us, and in darkness
falling, if we listen closely,
we can hear them, their voices, these
ghosts, North Country
spirits of the farmlands around us,
farmlands gone to woods
and summer homes, to leisure time
in our waning years,
preparing ourselves, hearing their
labored settling,
restless in their sleep, the creak
of old springs
shifting against their weight,
ageless old men,
old farmers still working against
time’s changing seasons.
