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As a child, my spirit cowered, terrified and meek;
But my granny's ghostly stories made me smile.
Entranced, I sat and listened to her speak
On floors of mother earth and never tile.

The blood within her veins was quite a mix:
Cherokee and Irish, and believe me you could tell.
I never got a boo boo that my Granny couldn't fix.
And to this day I smell the sulfur in her well.

Though her name was Cora Hampton, she was called Old Lady Hamp;
It was said with great affection round the town
In her younger days, a midwife, she was quite the little scamp:
A reputation she could never quite live down.

Once, she told me of a farmer whose fields would glow at night
In a spooky, kind of ucky yellow green.
He tried everything he know of but he couldn't make it right;
The folks in town were starting to get mean.

One night his youngest daughter, a girl of barely eight,
Awakened, shouting all about a most amazing dream.
She said there was a secret buried out beyond the gate,
Lying in the fields that ran along the stream.

The farmer, by this time, had very little left to lose
So he took his precious bundle at her word.
He went to digging while the sky was midnight blue
And by morning he outsang the loudest bird.

Granny said she midwife'd at a birth just round the bend
And was there when they body was pulled free.
No one recognized the stranger with the shape that he was in.
But it really didn't mater much to me.

I did not sleep for days, just thinking of the child
Who solved her daddy's problem with a dream.
Wishing I could be so special as her nearly drove me wild;
So my Granny took me fishing in 'our' stream.

Cora died when she was eighty, 'bout a dozen years ago.
One minute she was talking, then she closed her eyes and passed.
I take comfort in the knowledge that she knew I loved her so;
And every Halloween, I tip my bardic hat.