The Black Dog of Meriden

Atop The Hanging Hills rests my town below

Always the same, that cursed hike.

Forlorn bodies climb its dark tableau

To feel that warm unbreeze chase souls towards fright.

These hills rend shivers down through my spine; eyes felt watching firm & set.

There emerged before me clad in gossamer void, 

To trap my body now entrenched; at last I see we finally met.

No bark, no noise: & out with a wind, the phantom leaves my null, destroyed.

Down the hills I ran, panicked fury in step

To cure these eyes now aghast in a naked disease.

Emerged from their home the divine there quickly lept

To comfort & console one scorned, by fateful unease.

Thereafter our sprawl, hearts nurtured each other quite fast; our bodies together fell

& off to college we crept; knit lives still embroiled

By passion, their pebble lodged in my heart. Only Aphrodite could propel

A sun of love as intense; together in sweet Meriden, did our lives rest uncoiled.

Thirty years of trees changing their colorful dress; a peace serene as clearest glass.

Yet felt still hollow gazes from atop those Hills; my body left ringing to its fateful call.

In draped shadow I answered their somber request for mass;

& then from the mist did emerge the night creature of our horrors' churched squall.

Old legs raced again down these mountains of gloom.

A salted rain soon cast my home in a squalid flooded pain.

Together twenty five years now no flowers left to bloom.

I ferried her heart right below our tree & everyday since my eyes cast their next rain.

Children now grown & cast away from my home.

A pain still croons this old withered chest dry.

Upwards & onwards ghosts whisper a climb up to roam;

To catch a view of their city & ease a powerful that powerful cry.

In my eyes great corner there I snatched its final glance.

Thrice together now seen, & at last 

Then no more. 

Submitted as part of the 2025 Humanities and Healing Event. By Braeden Sagehorn