The big old house sits atop yonder hill guarding its history from curious eyes. They say its full of spirits all claiming important family ties. A stranger approached through the mist with curiosity nudging him to the door. He knocked and knocked to no avail while the wind whistled “Nevermore!” Finally he found a basement door unlocked but covered with vines. The stranger gave it a mighty push and collapsed among racks of wines. He brushed off cobwebs and dust and the bottles set him to think: “A rich family settled here once at least two centuries past. They nonstop partied and drank because the future seemed so vast.” Some force pulled him upstairs to the kitchen strangely still No food or wine waited on silver trays nor a butler to sense his will. But “Listen,” a voice seemed to say, “Go to the library down the hall and look for a squire by the fire and he should tell you all.” The stranger looked all around but no squire was to be found only august gentlemen and ladies watching from portraits all around. Neatly shelved were hundreds of books probably none read but also no TV. He admired furniture, china and bric-a-brac standing ready for the next society tea. Then a voice from somewhere said: “This old house sits on a historic hill guarding its history from curious eyes and I, the squire, am its guardian spirit but you took me by surprise.” “You must talk to my daughter who resides on the uppermost floor I will call and introduce you while you go to knock at her door.” The stranger thought this a little odd that he was not questioned and trusted so but he was bound to follow the path to whomever and wherever it might go. He went up several floors of creaky stairs until he arrived at the third floor. He passed by musty rooms with ancient beds until he came to a promising door. The stranger knocked ever so gently and the door squeaked and opened ajar. A sweet voice, barely a whisper, said “Please come in, whoever you are.” The stranger entered and took a seat but no one could he see. “I am here to find sweet Betsy and who might you be?” “I am Betsy, the last of this family line, and my husband was lost at sea; but you have a voice like his so might you perchance be he?” “I am indeed your husband David! After a terrible storm, wreck, and amnesia, I was destined to forever roam. I only knew by notes and letters how to find my way back home.” “David, my love, we should embrace but I am but a pitiful ghost. Every day from the Widow’s Walk above I scanned the sea for you, my dearest.” “After days and weeks and months, of grief and hunger I did die but please be welcome in our home and someday we’ll unite in the sky.” “Let me say these final words: Everything you love will be lost but all will return another way and our stars no longer will be crossed.” The big old house sits atop yonder hill guarding its history from curious eyes. But now we know it will live again with Betsy’s and David’s ties. (c) 2020 Larry Kilham Comfort is the old and familiar
bridging heaven and earth. Comfort is shade and ripe apples, pastel patterns and companions dozing. Here are the old apple trees as the generations of the dead with knurled limbs reaching, trying to tell us something. We look for tender bud newborns - the fruit of those we know - or dead brown in Fall's frost with a new cycle in the offing. The cosmos accommodates these episodes in time - from here we know not how - and there's rebirth in the Spring. (c) 2018 Larry Kilham  There is a fit between earth and sky.
It is the jagged trees It is the blowing grass It is the spittled sea We seek to conjoin heaven and earth. Your parents lie still in the meadow. Their memories reach out They try to smile They lie mute We ask them, “Where is the way?” How do gulls, ospreys, and sparrows know what to do? From their forebears? From their DNA? All the creatures somehow know. Before we rest in our grassy plot and see our offspring flapping overhead, “Listen!” we whisper as they fly between earth and sky. © 2018 Larry Kilham  As a child on a farm I knew the totality of creation (and in that wonder life had no end). The seasons and the extremes represented all that we knew and all that might be known... Gazing at life in a pond, the dew on a summer meadow, the tundra on a winter beach... We knew life is forever if we are happy to the end. (c) 2017 Larry Kilham |
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