One Minute Ghost Story

The Hand Of Fate by Claudia Kunin

A while ago, I participated in an afternoon sponsored by X-TRA, the art magazine, at the Hammer Museum, where artists and writers were asked to pick an image, any kind of image, and speak about it for one minute.  I picked an image from my fabulous photographer friend Claudia Kunin’s portfolio ‘3D Ghost Stories” called “The Hand of Fate” (guess whose hand it was?)  Here’s the image, and this was my minute.

 

Richard Quincey was a promising young man.

He used to meet Beth Ambercrombie down by the river.

No one knew what went on by moonlight.

 

Soon after,

He left and wed the daughter of a Boston merchant,

a handsome marriage.

A promising start.

 

Yet, from then on, nothing went right.

Whatever he tried was doomed to failure.

Lawsuits ran against him.

Children sickened and died.

He bore his failures nobly.

What a shame, people said, about Richard Quincey.

 

While Beth Ambercrombie walks in her strange garden by moonlight

She never did marry.

By moonlight she peers into the basin

where she studies Richard Quincey,

And again draws the sign in the water.