Rest In Peace
copyright 2012 by Marian Allen

When them redskins stole my ponies, I thought it’d be fun to steal ’em back.

Didn’t work out so well, though.

Thought I got away, even though I didn’t untie no ponies before they got spooked and raised the alarm.

I was almost home, when they caught up to me. A tomahawk got me in the back, right in my own pumpkin patch. The last thing I seen was the grimace of the savage that pulled his weapon outta my back, flipped me over, and gimme a final wallop between the eyes.

The redskins carried me back to their village and buried me in the corn, and there I stayed, harvest and planting and harvest and planting….

Some white folks came and rounded up the Indians and marched ’em off somewhere. Other people came and went. Land the Indians knew how to farm didn’t look like nothing to folks who were used to taking rich ground and using it till it wouldn’t even grow weeds, so nobody turned up my remains.

A town grew up around me, but this old piece of bottom land got deeded off to be a park, and my bones just laid there.

Now, I hear folks say, the ice is melting someplace, and this lowland is getting marshy. It’ll be a lake, soon. Maybe all that water will dig me up and float me off somewheres.

It might be fun to be on the run again, after all these years.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Think of a way for a ghost to travel.

MA