The Ghost of Benedictine Hall

                       by Mardelle Fortier

Who has dared to disturb my silent
walk through these rooms?
For a hundred years I have made
my reverent pilgrimage.
Do you think
to hold in the past with a wrecking ball?
I am the ghost of Benedictine Hall.

A century has turned since Jaeger

laid the cornerstone. They and their

generation have turned to dust.

How many men have entered under

“God, Church, and Country”?

Who now prays in Sisters’ Chapel?
Do the Kitchen Sisters yet cook?

Are there still experiments in Bugs Lab?

And who shall carve the turkey this

Christmas laboring to come?

Strange. I hear no conversation

in Scholars’ Lounge.

Floating through the 4^th floor attic

I seem to hear the strains of a tune.

And look! The Sisters are

climbing solemnly the steps

to 2^nd floor, to Sisters’ Chapel.

The students who have passed

through the corridors and ascended

the quaint stairs, I know them all:

doctors, lawyers, priests, monks;

men and women who shall carry with them

the memory of this place…as do I.

The cornerstone was moved from Ben Hall

to Kindlon, but the cornerstone

which is Christ is from Alpha

to Omega. His watch-- eternal.

I am the ghost of Benedictine Hall.

Who am I, ye inquire so?

When all mysteries are revealed,

then, then shall ye know.