LISTEN, THE SPIRITS…
by Gwen Austin

Copyright 1998


Perhaps you think
it is the sighing
of the wind?

But sit on the
stone-pillared porch,
listen closely,
and you will hear
tales of many a bygone year.

Old Man Robertson
tarries awhile among the stand
of eastern white pine.
"Here among these trees
I will have my cabin built."
While stroking his scruffy beard,
he walks out room dimensions.
"Just one big room here,
with a great stone fireplace
is all I need."
His timid wife pipes up,
"Kitchen? Bathroom?"

"Oh, I suppose—
a lean to here will as a kitchen suffice."
He strides to the opposite end
of the envisioned great room.
"A bathroom here.
But to take advantage of that view,
a grand stone-pillared porch is a must."

He muses, then snaps his fingers.
"Drunken Tom at my paper mill
my stone mason will be.
When that binge-look
in his eyes I see,
it's here I'll bring him."

Soon a misshapen cabin arises—
a great room with
second-floor sleeping loft
accessed by ladder.
The kitchen juts off one end,
and the bathroom
of different height and width,
off the other.
The porch roof slope straight down
from great room's fireplace wall.
"Its not the house that's star here,"
roars Old Man Robertson.
"Just look at that view."

One of his nieces
visiting one summer,
makes her life's work choice
there on that porch
overlooking the view.
"A teacher's what I must be."
She fills out an application
for Virginia Normal School,
mails it and waits.

Soon her acceptance letter arrives.
Her delight knows no bounds
as she cavorts around
on that venerable porch.
When in her 80's,
to that porch she returns
telling of teaching adventures.

Mr. Carrie, next caretaker
of this New Hampshire woods,
tends and fusses
over every tree,
until they are known as
'the show place of white pine.'

The unpainted cabin
endures unchanged.
When the 1938 hurricane
lays waste the magnificent pines,
Mr. Carrie pleads,
"I'm too old to start anew."
He advertises far and wide,
to find a buyer for 12 acres
of ruined land with a fine view.

In the New York Times,
my western-born parents
see the ad for New Hampshire land.
With a new baby—me—
they want out of Lower East Side
of New York City.
Mom, and Dad, a poor preacher,
drive 200 miles to see.

Bumping off a gravel road
onto a lowly dirt track,
they buck up the hill in low gear.  
Halfway up stand
stone gate pillars, grand.
"Too rich for our blood, no doubt."
But on up they drive,
as there is no turn-around.

Thankfully, Mr. Carrie and my parents
strike a deal.
And thus in 1941 begins
our family's love affair with
a New Hampshire hilltop,
our 'spirit home.'

That 'ugly duckling' cabin,
remodeled into a 'swan,'
sports sparkling white paint
with jaunty red trim.
Red geraniums and white petunias
over-flow window boxes' brim.

Up and coming white pines,
nurtured and loved,
pruned and thinned,
thrive and grow
once more into a
'show-place of white pine.'

A 50's hurricane takes a taste
of one hillside,
laying it to waste
like a child's game
of pick-up-sticks

Dad hires a feisty old logger
and his mule team
to make the woods right.
The cuss words we learn
are quite a fright!

One winter's storm
smashes a tree
on the bedroom dormer.
Leaking snow and rain
wreck our domain.
But repair and remodeling
even correct
that too-steep roof-slope.
Now insulated and paneled,
with a picture window added,
that bedroom becomes
a room with an ever-changing view.

Only Mom's spirit
that view does see,
for it is that summer
her life is no longer to be.

Dad tree-farms on,
pruning, thinning, admiring
the forest land each summer
for twenty-eight years more.

He endows the legacy
and responsibility
to my brother and me.
Then dies.

Five years have passed,
as the cabin endures
break-ins, vandalism, thefts,
peeling paint, water leaks,
sagging doorsills
and periodic visits
from friends,
my brother
and me.

Now pines grow past their prime.
as their roots languish
on soil-less bedrock,
the trees shrivel and die.

A log harvester ought come
before they all succumb,
but my brother says, "No way."

He thinks the trees will remain
with no thought or care.
It's the house where
his plans are focused
for remodeling and expansion.

Is now the time to relinquish
my hold—
or is it 
the hilltop's hold on me?

My younger brother,
what kind of forest-keeper
will he be?

If not now, when?