Annie

I sleep in the bedroom of a dead woman.

She’s no trouble.

I saw her, but just once, the night we moved in.

Annie.

Maybe it was exhaustion, and even my hair ached.

But in a shaft of moonlight, just as sleep took me,

I had a brief impression of someone in lace and a gown,

Just standing there like a column of smoke.

She died in this room and they had the wake downstairs

In the front room with the tall bay windows.

 

They laid her in a grave in the old Quaker cemetery,

A private and quiet place surrounded by a brick wall. .

For 134 years  the wind

Whistles its song through the

the iron gate, and over the stones,

a song without words.