Mary Frederick Ahearn

Turn of the Season

It's early spring again, still chilly, yet full of greening hope. The peepers sing in the ponds where the red-winged blackbirds have returned. The air's full of rain and I feel that fullness too. Restless with a longing that spring always brings. And as the years have gathered, a different kind of longing, a sadness, this wish to be with those I can't. A wish that's a need. Ghosts claim me tonight. From out of the deep nowhere they've come, one by one, elusive and aloof. Without voices, or faces, just their absence. Those who were and, now, inexplicably, are not. In the last few years their number have grown. And all I can say is "I want, I want."

locked away in my heart
do you weep there
too?