Thoughts of Last Summer

When we first moved here I was living alone during the week. Matt would come up on weekends. When there was no moon I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It was scary at first, and still is, when I walk around the hay mows in the dark....in fact I try to have all the chores done before dark and hunker down in the trailer for the night. When I had my sewing machine in the hay mow and I was really pushing to get bags done for the Oct. 20 Rhinebeck Festival, I would find myself looking up into a vast empty black space, and get a little freaked out. I thought surely there were spirits floating about, drawn to my life force. There is a cemetery across the street where the founding Puritans, the Burkhytes are buried. Why wouldn't they come over to see what's going on? Matt says leave them alone, they are at peace in Heaven! They must be as they've never come to visit. Not yet! Some nights I would tiptoe out of the trailer and lie on top of the picnic table and stare straight up to the stars - and there were plenty. I would see comets galore with my proliferal vision, and once thought I saw a UFO. I told my kids, who got a little worried about their mother out in the way-back-yonder by herself. They were probably aircraft from Fort Drum. No flight path to Newark Airport here! I became quite the star watcher, and read the New York Times star report regularly. No smog or glare in Brookfield to block the view!