From day one I felt
an ominous foreboding,
an impending dread.
Yet, the place intrigued me:
haunting Butternuts that reached
into ghostly moon light;
chilling howls of coyotes
who lorded the property.

It spoke of a grandeur long gone,
a richness I could only imagine
I tried to resist its pull.
But its ancient dignity possessed me.

The first horror presented itself
a month after I moved in.
My lifelong confidant, my father, died.
Fathers die before us, we all know that.
But the week of my father’s funeral
I learned my husband was dying as well.

Each night I’d wait for his steady breath
to pad down to the living room
and allow my fears to wash over me,
admit they were real.
 
When he died, I spent day after day
passing time in bed staring out the window,
watching deer make their daily treks,
scurries of squirrels leap from branch
to branch then burrow in their hollows,
owls swoop in as dusk approached.

A tornado decimated
most of the hundred-year-old trees.
Always the growl, Get out,
get out. While another voice pleaded,
Don’t go, we’ll be lost forever if you do.