THE LEGEND OF OLD JOHN LEGEND

The old timers up here

On dry ridge

Speak legends

Of old John Legend

A deranged old man

A ghastly crooked ghost of a beast

Haunts this injun land

Legend has it

He was a hermit,

no one dared too venture

his spookly-dark abode

“No! No! Don’t go there, child

That’s ugly man

He’ll grab you

And who know’s how vile !

Jon’s cabin had caught fire

One derangedful night

Mung’st bitterness and cursing

Heard grim within

They say

He rose that night from the ashes

Perhaps from Hell itself

A shadowy host ghost of a man

Sentenced to roam about

The land

Tall and lanky

Slightly scaryly over-bent

A Fire-scared

Homeless and degenerate

Doomed to Wander this land

As legend would have it, he leaves burnt marks

Wherever he lays his hand

On sunny days

His shadow plays

With a chilly eeriness

Winters you can see his breath

but nowhere’s stands the man

At night footsteps heard on

Creaky vacant steps

On the back porch?

Attic?

Or was it in my basement?

Or suspended hovering ‘oer my bed?

Always the black-burnt hand print.

A chill consumes

My bedroom

Still nippyness fills my room

Very still I lie there

A chill runs up my spine

Fearing

Fearing the ghost

Of kingdom come

In winter I hear the crunch

Of walked-on crunchy snow

Outside below my hearth-warmed window

I peek out

Nothing?

No footprints?

No footprints in the snow?

Just steamy footprints

As if someone were peeking in my inn

I reside on old John’s mountain

Used to be his home

The shadowy soulful

Now death-sentenced soul

Doomed to ghastly roam

Eerie yet allusive

Old John here still resides

And his deadly demise

Still

Haunts these hills

To every one’s

Surmise

tom tenbrunsel

The Ghost of Rabbit Ridge

Author’s Note: As ghastly spooky ghostly as it is, this poem is of the genre of flash photo poetry. Is it perhaps in the category of flash, non-fiction fiction? Or just a ghastly ghostly poem? To get you all a thinking - sending chills up yor spine. Oh you’ve seen him alright; you just don’t know😎