Stanley Morris Noah – Dallas,Texas

Shadows in the house of lights

can be seen if you believe they are there. It’s the long traveled deep wheeled road that got me here.  Near darkness followed like a spell, and the outlined view was found                                   the old house with yellow lit windows,flickering from inside. In town it’s told a Civil War General lived here.

But never came back. A reclusive daughter lived within for years then disappeared as if she never really existed. The mother died suddenly decades ago. Only her name remains in the county clerk’s ledger of deaths.

Family cemetery lay a short walk behind the house as if a breeze away.        I knocked on the door.

Climbed through a window.  Found my way to the cellar of connected rooms, connected doors. And then, a narrow tunnel of red brick, clay walls and downward  steps in the direction of the cemetery.        I recoiled from the

unknown that laced a fear, somehow foreseen, hidden inside like a force of personal history      like a self destructive sensation.

I drove back to town.  Told what happened. They asked,               “did I see shadows without their bodies moving about?”  I replied, “only my own.”  They all answered with a voice like a distant echo, “return to the house. You do not belong here. Hurry.”

I remembered  the house garden pond. Now dried, leaving gold bones of fishes. Leaving everything in a haze.

Stanley Morris Noah– Winner of The Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest, 2006. Poet of the month, Sept., 2009, fullofcrow.com.