By Carol Hamilton
Today is Halloween, and the sky
does not look spooky…but I remember
our house of many demons set back
on a rutted Ohio road at the edge
of a ravine that roared with snowmelt,
dried up in summer, birthed
a hillside of infant snakes one spring.
My middle son was lost in the woods there.
He told us, he only four,
we should have followed his little
baby footprints in the snow to find him.
But I was too young for the obvious,
not strong enough for battle with dark forces.
When I return, a wind shear has taken
the blessed dogwood and the row of Scotch pine
outside the kitchen window, and the red shingles
are gone. Spirits return from the grave
this Eve in Oaxaca, Michoacán, and I have been
happily surrounded by them there.
But that place held all the terrors
I dreamed as a child about a two-story house
down the street, one I had to walk past each day.
It was spider-filled,
so I hurried, averted my eyes.
We friends shivered passing
the Roman Catholic grounds,
sure a bald nun would snatch us,
and we laughed. But the spider house
was my secret, more frightening than the past.
Category: Poetry, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU online creative writing