The Ghost of the Cahoon Hotel - Cardston

There’s a cold and wet spirit roaming through Cardston this autumn.

You

can see him in the eyes of the inn keepers,

Splendid women -a little bit unrested by loneliness

And by the contentious silence emerging from the streets,

Soaking it all by its pace-.

These queens, governing all from the heights of their counters

-ruling the kingdoms of passing time, of the ephemeral realm of the highway-

Had saw this ghost in the eye, and their open smile,

Desperate,

Timid and longing to break through and explode,

Immersed on a constellation of Freckles,

Reveal the bear tracks of his presence.

The time drops slowly in Cardston

And the women are particularly sensible to its steps.

They hear it dragging its belly through the main street,

Enormous as an antediluvian worm.

That’s why inn keepers -as well as librarians,

Cashiers,

Souvenir sellers,

Old ladies resting in the yesterday parfum of her beds,

Blush all the time

On a raging galloping of blood:

It’s their coral beads against the ghost of Cahoon Hotel,

It’s an ancient formula to deal with this worm made of dense seconds,

Minutes,

Centuries,

Ages.

Cardston is old,

and its dangerous longevity still dwelling in the Cahoon Hotel.

Cardston women always give furtive looks to the building,

Untrusted of its ominous but familiar presence.

That’s why Cardston women blush all the time.

On the blood language of the heart they’re saying:

‘we are alive,

we are here,

we will be here’.

Juan Carlos Montero Vallejo