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 Complexity has smothered the thoughtful life
and dreams slip silently away. Truth appears briefly like a mouse scuttling in the night. Why bother to discern wrong from right? Now I know why the mouse runs free - in the open air, truth is there to see. Like the resplendent flower or the singing bird we may start anew and be heard. (c) 2019 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 were oceans, microbes and volcanoes;
now piñons and chamisas as shades of green. There are stone gardens full of fossils and birds remembered for color and sheen. They say, the tribal pueblos moved as their resources they exhausted; comes now the techno survivors they survive yet we know not how... and always the cactus blooms. Who are the people of the rivers and mesas? Los Pueblos Who are the people from beyond the mountains? Nosotros Who are the people of the subdivisions and plains? We Anglos Somehow, the cosmos accommodates these islands of time in the great sea change. But from here we know not how... and always the cactus blooms. (c) 2018 Larry Kilham We walked the desert in our land.
We saw robot wrecks scattered in the sand. Not broken pots or pillars of stone, but defunct computers and pieces of bone. We heard a ghostly voice from a gossamer muse, “Look around for what's nice - something besides plastics and rust. The creations of art and music fed the worms and now are dust.” (c) 2017 Larry Kilham |
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