Mr Ford
Mr Ford's spectre paced his basement room.
A fire-place. Lined with books, it must have been.
Its window opened to a hollow green
rocked and stocked VIctorian garden.
That's who he was: VIctorian, gardener,
cleric, and father (I think it was of ten).
He claimed peace to study there and then,
the spacious chamber entered from the kitchen
by stone steps. The room was used in our day
only on Wednesdays by the Brownies.
A big, heavy billiard table
slunk to one side, unused (there was a cue).
The boarded floor was dry, the rug threadbare.
We sometimes put ice-cream blocks on a stair
to keep them cool. The sweet green smell
of apples on the ledges, and a wine rack,
cobwebby, unused. A locked old door
led to a room with a frightful secret
we couldn't ask about, were stone-walled
if we tried. A flicker of silence
was seen in our parents' eyes.
Decades later, I learned it was a prison,
a murder, a hanging, a very young girl.
I'm glad my father didn't tell me.
I'm glad I know now. I sometimes wonder
if that's why Mr Ford hid from his children,
or if it was before their time.
Sally Evans
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