The night you came in shreds
and said I am afraid--no there were two
nights, months apart, scattered
in my head by you being there
and your soul in a different place;
sobs and fear for a lost child
from the mother wanting freedom,
wanting both the child and the freedom.

These northern nights are thick with grief
and the ghosts speak French and over
the broken granite walls there are whoops of
Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Abenaki--
a perpetual trickle from the mixed blood
of the French farmers and the Penobscot girls
who were told as babes Day and Night are enemies.

There are spooks everywhere, even in your bed:
they leave cobwebs behind
and flash in corners like clacked flint.
They have driven away your guardian angels
and surround your cot, touching your cheek
and watching you breathe your breath.
And they know how to throw your heart
intio the emptiness of abysmal uncertainty.

You would rather sleep in the car but I cannot let you--
only a woman marked for tragedy finds comfort outside.
Four days you are here, sleepless asleep,
wondering who I am, the man you thought you knew:

I show you the grave of Captain Hardy down the road
and the tiny stones of his dead children all dead in a week,
dead of smallpox in 1804,
but you feel their stale breath
beside the bedside where once
their mother covered them with quilts
she made herself, made with love,
as you love your distant chid.

Take me to the sheriff you say,
sixty miles awauy: Take me to the inn
(the inn is locked and shuttered)
It is now a tale by the Grimm brothers:
there is no way out of the house but the forest
and there is no wy out of the forest.
Two small lights dangle in the bare barn,
upstairs books and demons dance
dance in a round and say
"Come Inside and we will sing you to mortal sleep."