The Spook Light

THE SPOOK LIGHT

Lights out at the burger grill and bar.

Smoking leaning on the hoods of cars.

Far above stirs up the Milky Way.

Night heat rising from the July Day.

Everybody drive down to the Spook Light swamp,

where the Ghost Light quivers, where the devil stomps,

and floats above the railroad track and trees,

like a ball of lightning on the summer breeze.

No one can touch it, no one can track it down.

Comes some evenings when the moon goes down.

Makes your hair rise, makes the coyote moan.

Sets a chill down in you skin and bone.

Could be the ghost of some old Indian camp,

or a miner's lantern swinging in the damp.

Forever warning that there's danger more,

maybe an old gunfire from the Civil War.

When it burns away we all head back to town,

and breathe the cricket air and hoot-owl sounds,

and gun our cars out where the road is dry,

and keep a watch out on the southern sky.

Did someone see a ghost walk through the room?

Did someone see a vision in the moon?

Can grown men see the things that children know?

There's a Spook Light rising down by Neosho.