The house beyond the one we bought had stood
Empty countless years before we moved there
To that spot along the ridge, where the wood
Crept close and smelled always of molded leaves.
The road from our place to it drained downhill
Near a mile before the asphalt gave way
To twin dirt paths that held a memory still
Of the passage of feet and an old truck.
Left derelict in the taller grass just
Beyond the last bend in the now dirt road,
That same truck defeated by time and rust
Squatted like a steel and rubber tombstone.
Rising twisted and bony above it
With limbs sprawled skyward, grasping and gaunt,
Stood a skeletal tree, like a spirit
Of the wood from a time before humans.
A few branches gripped the skins of brown leaves,
But most jabbed stark and angry at the sky,
Like a stubborn old man who prays or grieves
The loss of a daughter taken too soon.
Silkworm nests woven thick and cloudy grey,
Clustered throughout the tree, caught between limbs
Like ghosts that, their haunting done, chose to stay
As markers of those who had long since left.
We too no longer live on that old lane,
But some ghosts, like the silkworm shrouded trees
Or the ache of a memory’s deep pain,
Cannot be so easily exorcized.
A. Keith Kelly grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and worked for years as a fly-fishing and bird hunting guide before entering academia. He is now a professor of English literature and writing living on a tiny farm outside of Atlanta, Georgia.