Papa's Ghost Towns

Papa's Ghost Towns

By Heather Phillips Kearl

It's fitting that Papa should be like them so

He brings us here searching, year after year

With their yawning doorways and supporting beams,

the old houses preserve a peaceful silence

like a dream of smoothly ebbing streams

or dark shadows, moving forward

 The silence fills each room, so compressed

its dark wispy shapes pool on the peeling paper

 I am lost, but complete as the silence swallows me

surrounding me in its flurry of memories

The house knows all; it's always alert,

full of treasures, knowledge and respect

when on first glance it seemed so bare

 He spends every day, constructing new homes,

showy and grand, then hands them,

like a newborn child, to parents longing for such.

 Yet,

just now, as I stand amidst the broken glass,

splintered wood, and peaceful completion,

I understand why he's so much at home

Poem by my daughter

Photographs by Janene

Sometimes it seems that it takes a daughter's insight to be able to understand who I am.