Shadows Come

I listen to the voice of the train making it’s way east, a cacophony of whistle and thunder and clattering, muted by distance, but sharp edged as it resonates across the river. Now the whistle blows – but growing quickly fainter… the thundering…the clattering… gone. And now the sounds of the birds gathered at the feeder chatter back into my hearing, the swish of a passing car on the road below, all cocooned by this village’s velvet silence.

These homes.., these slightly tilting, nary-a-plumb-line-to-be-found homes stand as sentinels along the banks of the Ohio. I often wonder who their owners were, that such a small town could boast this avenue of once grand ladies, their grandeur rather forlorn, more so for never having been abandoned. And all these lady’s feet have been washed by the Ohio River, indeed, that river threatened many a time to climb right up their skirts…….but they stood. Their foundations shift, cracks write long lines of narrative across walls that have seen more human lives than can ever be written, all part of a village with roots over two hundred years old, built when the land supported people who were, well, true Americans……

The wind skitters through the branches now, trailing a shawl through early fallen leaves across lawns grown weary of trumpeting summer’s fecundity. Autumn has sent harbingers of her arrival and summer seems eager to bid adieu.

Normally I would snuggle cozily in the anticipation of winter’s cold, but now upon this land march harbingers trumpeting ill winds and evil weather unlike any we have ever known in all of our nation’s history. There may be no warmth to snuggle in and our hands may be stayed from putting food in the larder, and the grandchildren we normally would be buying early Christmas gifts for become the sum and substance of the only reason we live because now…now we can’t see their lives unfolding as ours did, or as our parents and grandparents did. We are realizing that we have to imagine a future where they must learn to fight for their very lives and Christmas, if even allowed to continue, will never be the same ….. Is this what people in the past felt like when the shadow of war and tribulation approached?

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