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The Ghost Girl
One sunny May, I ran to play,
__When I was twelve years old,
Upon the hill. I miss her still—
__A girl with curls of gold
In ribbon ties, big sky-blue eyes,
__And waving, dark-red dress
Soon ran my way and asked to play—
__How could I not say yes?
“I’m Beth,” she said. “My mother’s dead;
__I’m hiding from her ghost.”
I thought, “A shame, her gruesome game,”
__But soon I was engrossed.
We laughed and played along the grade,
__Cavorted up the hill,
And soon rolled down, clothes turning brown,
__Collapsed, and then lay still.
Then Beth and I stared toward the sky,
__Then wrestled, then caressed,
And very soon that afternoon,
__Our love began the rest.
We hoped our playing would one day
__Give rise to married bliss.
I gazed into her pools of blue;
__We leaned in for the kiss.
A woman’s ghost gave off the most
__Horrendous, ghastly chill.
We stood upright in cold and fright;
__Her ghost-hand reaped the kill.
I saw Beth die. Her ghost stood high
__And quickly shed its shell.
Her ribbons fastened to the grass
__As down her body fell.
Both, hand in hand, flew off the land.
__Beth’s ghost was forced to go
Away from me like Annabel Lee,
__But where, I’ll never know.
Then Beth up high bid me goodbye;
__She waved as she looked back.
The two ghosts flew into the blue,
__And everything went black.
I felt Mom shake me wide awake;
__She’d found me on the hill.
“Are you all right?” She yelled in fright.
__I sat up feeling ill.
I told her of my one-day love
__And how she met her death.
My mother deemed it all a dream
__And said there was no Beth.
So I believed I’d been deceived
__And never met the lass,
Until I found, upon the ground,
__Her ribbon coiled on grass.
The ghost who took her didn’t look
__And left it unawares.
I picked the band up in my hand
__And three blonde, curly hairs.
.
.
Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland. His poetry has also been published in Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, and many others, and his short fiction has been published in several journals as well.
A nice little story, with a shocking conclusion. Putting it in 4-3-4-3 ballad meter fixes the poem in the tradition of archaic folk-verse that often mixes love (or any other good thing) with some terrible visitation from the dead, or anger, or otherworldly horror. I’m thinking of “Randall, My Son” or “Barbara Allen.”
Thank you, Joe. Yes, I wrote it with traditional ballads, such as the ones you mention, in mind. Plus the classic poets in both English and French (the French have the same kind of folk verse). Even the teenage tragedy songs of the 1950s and 1960s, which did little more than follow in their footsteps and modernize the musical style.
It’s meant to build on a longstanding tradition.
Such a beautiful fantasy. Great ending with the ribbon and hair that seemed to mean your love was there. Mystical fantasy is a fondness of mine and this one really delivers, I harken back to my own reality/fantasy as a twelve-year-old with a young girl; however, I was the one who disappeared to live in Texas.
Thank you, Roy. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I chose age twelve for the speaker in part because this was when I was starting to understand that life is, to say the least, not a Disney movie. I was listening to songs like this at the speaker’s age, partly for this reason.
It’s interesting that you refer to the girl as my love as opposed to the speaker’s, as if it were a true story. People have made that mistake with various poems of mine; one reader who did said it’s because I write the narrative voice so well. I hope he’s right!
Great to read Joshua. I was hooked in from beginning to end. Thanks for a chilling read.
Thank you, Jeff! I’m really happy to hear that it had that effect. I bet you could make a great song out of this…
Rather unusual, an exceptional story and I loved it. Thank you!
Thank you Phil! It’s precisely because a story like this is so unusual these days that I had to write it. Songs and movies almost always have couples go from “meet cute” to an implied “happily ever after” because that’s what sells, and I finally got sick of it.
This is a wonderfully intriguing poem, Josh, with a supernatural twist. I always enjoy a good ghost story. This one links romantic fantasy and love denied with a frightening “Twilight Zone” plot turn. The poem is very well-written in terms of rhyme and meter, but even more enjoyable is the story-telling itself. I believe your ability to plot out, pace and characterize a story is one of your greatest strengths as a writer. This is a fine example of that.
Brian, given your talent at writing fiction and first-person poems, I’m honored. This means a lot. Thank you.
A gripping, well-written poem that really tells a story.
Thank you David!
I love everything about this poem – the rhyme, the rhythm, and the frisson of fear and folktale feel of this delightful piece… a poem that begs to be read aloud beneath a full moon on a sultry summer evening. Great stuff!
Thank you, Susan! I’m always glad to hear you like my poems.
I found the usual abab rhyming to be too loose for a poem like this; imposing the constraint of internal rhyme greatly helped.
This is a well-constructed ballad, both in terms of its fidelity to the form and to its subject. Yet despite being a traditional ballad, the poem is remarkably fresh and new. Its language is conversational rather than formalistic, and it tells an engaging story with a surprising and engaging ending with several possible interpretations. A fine poem, well worth re-reading and setting to music.
Thank you, Adam. It’s nice to hear all this about it. I’d be interested in hearing what several possible interpretations of the ending you see. I based the ending on traditional ballads, of course, but I imagine the speaker learning by finding the ribbon and hair that the story really happened instead of being a dream. I imagine him never seeing the girl again, but remembering the incident all his life.
Yes, I agree that this would be great to set to music! God gave me a talent for words, but not a talent for making the right music for them. I’m hoping one of our more musical poets can come up with something good…