Rheinstein Windmill House Overlooking Ditch Plains in Montauk, NY ~Ben Kasazkow
Walking the Plains of Sandpiper Hill
by Lenora Rain-Lee Good
I walk to the old Windmill House that
now exists only in few photos and fading
memories. When younger, I dreamed
that house–its rooms, its parties, the dancing
that defined the gilded age, when it was built,
I dreamed of living there, with staff
to cook, to clean, to drive me to the city
for shopping, for dining, for parties–for life.
Now I walk through the grasses, stop when
I arrive near the site where the old house breathed,
I sit in the grasses, and listen as the old Victrola
plays music from a hundred years ago,
the house rises from the grass, almost solid
enough to walk through, to climb the stairs,
to join the party, dance, share a glass
of champagne with them. I don’t.
I know it, like life itself, is only illusion,
that I must content myself with the heard
music, the heard laughter, the heard silences
from the old Jesuits who lived there later
as they quietly said Mass. Now, only the birds
dance in the air above where people danced
on the ground, only birds sing responses
to the baritone calls of the now gone Priests.
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