The Old Woman
by Jeff LeMond
Her family came from New Orleans, she lived there as a child.
A different time, a different place, with weather warm and mild.
Spanish moss in live oak trees and bougainvillea vines.
A warmer simple way of life. A better vanished time.
Her mother and her mother’s mother did the strangest things.
With sorcery and darkest arts, such power this all brings.
The legacy was passed along and now she lives as they.
Such witchcraft has a lofty price, and such a price to pay.
Decades as its guardian, never losing site.
Mindful of its tendencies, and wary of its bite.
Controlling such an evil thing is not an easy task.
Is this true malevolent, one needn’t ever ask.
Such tenebrous desires were at her beckon call.
With hot unbridled passion, she lived them one and all.
As seasons change and years go by
…she knew; would come a day.
For such a rich and lavish life,
a price she now must pay.
Driven from her parish, on the road and eastward bound.
She must remain relentless, until what’s lost is found.
A relic from the distant past, imperative to know.
If someone were to break the seal
The endless blood would flow.
On board a ship from Europe, at sea this cargo rides.
A captive of its circumstance
Imprisoned by the tides.
Preternatural insight warns her of a storm.
At least nine missing crewmen and how the ship was torn.
Other than the artifact, it seems all else was lost.
How could something ill as this; come at such a cost.
Her plan to gain its ownership; and thus control its power,
as moments pass, grow weaker as we near the witching hour.
As she drives into the dead of night she can’t help thinking back.
Such a life so few have lived. The white, the gray, the black.
Resigned to face a witches end before this day is done.
If she fails to tip the scales, she’s had a damn good run.
Driven by unknowing force somewhere in eastern Maine.
An old abandoned farmhouse as twilight starts to wane.
She steps inside an open door and smells such cold despair.
Her intuition reaffirms the prince of pain is there.
She senses many others sleeping neath the floor.
Too late now for recompense,
She needn’t wait for more.
Now standing on a hillside that overlooks the farm,
The speaking of an ancient phrase, The waving of an arm.
And in an instant lightning strikes and dark becomes as day.
The crypt is gone, the house is gone,
The worm has gone away.
With calm repose she gathers things and heads back to her car.
An eighty year old woman, with lightning in a jar.
She cleaned things up and made things right
and now she’s headed home.
Her family’s gone but life goes on.
She’ll face the day alone.
As she pulls onto the road from the corner of her eye,
across from where the farmhouse stood a truck rolls slowly by.
An 18 wheeler way out here that trucker must be lost.
A cloud of mist across the road,
is it mist; or frost…
