Shadows in the house of lights

Shadows in the house of lights

can be seen if you believe they are there. It's the long traveled
deep wheeled road that got me here. Near darkness followed like
a spell, and the outlined view was found              the old house
with yellow lit windows, flickering from inside. In town it's told a
Civil
War General lived here.             But never


came back. A reclusive daughter lived within for years then
disappeared as
if she never really existed. The mother died suddenly decades
ago. Only her name remains in the county clerk's ledger of
deaths. Family cemetery lay a short walk behind the
house as if a
breeze away.             I knocked on the door.

Climbed through a window. Found my way to the cellar of
connected rooms, connected doors. And then, a narrow tunnel
of red brick, clay walls and downward steps in the direction of
the cemetery.             I recoiled from the unknown that laced
a fear, some
how foreseen, hidden inside like a

force of personal history like a self destructive
sensation.             I drove back to town. Told what happened.
They asked,             "did you see shadows without their bodies
moving about?" I replied, "only my own." They all answered with
a voice like a distant echo, "return to the house. You do not
belong here. Hurry."

I remembered the house garden pond. Now dried, leaving gold
bones of fishes. Leaving everything in a haze.


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Stanley M. Noah has a BGS degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. He has been published in the following: Wisconsin Review, Nexus, Main Street Rag, South Carolina Review, Poetry Nottingham and other publications in the USA, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. He was the winner of the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest, 2006 and poet of the month, September 2009, fullofcrow.com He lives in Texas.