An Historical Afternoon

I ditched my class one afternoon,
a Monday, I recall,
a day in 1966
and sometime in the fall.
 
There was an empty house nearby,
that sat just out of view,
and owned by a conspirator,
a woman we all knew.

Her friends, including John Wilkes Booth
would use it as a base.
What once was Mary Surratt's house,
now an historic place.

The house sat dormant for a time,
in a state of disrepair,
but later found its rightful place,
receiving proper care.

It wasn't locked and I went in,
exploring room to room;
the energy within the house
was rife with woeful gloom,

ensuing from the history
of plots among its residents,
resulting in their deaths
upon the killing of our president.

It's in the annals of the war
between the blue and gray;
I reveled in a bird's eye view
of history that day.

I learned more history in that hour
while with the ghosts en-masse
than any given week at school
in U.S. History class!

~William