ghost

March 18, 2023

UNDER THE BED

There was a ghost
or two for a short while,
that lived under my bed
when I was three or four.

My mother said they
were not real, she couldn’t
see them when she looked,
so they were all in my mind.

I had to tell her that you
don’t ever actually see ghosts,
you just know they are there
because you sense their presence.

Mother’s ghost visited me
last night in my dreams, but
I reminded her that she didn’t
believe ghosts exist, and returned
to the dream she interrupted
and she . . . oh I don’t know what
she did, but she wasn’t there
and I suspect will not return,
which is entirely fine by me.

June 7, 2022

ALIVE IN THE NIGHT

I walked the city
in the heart of the night,
street lights casting the shadows
of ghosts of those long gone
to bed, unknowing
that the city has been
given over to ravening winds
that find no shelter.

I step into an alcove
and the fading light
of the flickering bulb overhead
urges me to move on
lest she bury me
in the darkness of her grave.

By day, this will all
be gone into hiding,
finding shelter we cannot see
and we forget that
when night again returns
the ghosts will dance
wildly in these streets.

May 15, 2022

CALLING

In the dark heart of night
time is suddenly frozen,
the clock’s hands stalactites
and stalagmites, unyielding
denying the approach of morning,
leaving the sun imprisoned
under the watchful gaze
of its celestial wardens.

It is then you appear,
call out to me, beg me
be silent, not asking
the lifetime of questions
I have accreted, providing
my own hopes and
imagination for answers,
but you have faces, not
those of that weekend
but of other days, she
younger, in college, he
in a college yearbook
at a school he never attended
save as part of the ROTC
contingent of the Air Force.

I bid you farewell, finally,
and time again takes motion
and morning welcomes the sun.

April 28, 2022

ENFORCED SILENCE

The city is a ghost town,
the ghosts peering warily
from windows they now
wish they had taken
the time to have cleaned,
and now there is time
and no one to clean.

They fear the silence,
cannot fathom the smell
of the air, something
faintly like a cool morning
from their suburban childhoods.

They have found pots,
pans cast aside or used
for any purpose other
than cooking, and food
created by their hands,
from mother’s recipes recalled
has now appeared.

They want the noise,
the odors, the cheap
take-out places and fine
restaurants back, their
lives, but pause and are
thankful they are still
here and able to want.

First Published in Adversity, Vol. 1, The Poet, 2021

April 2, 2022

HAUNTING

The ghosts of my birth parents
blow into my dreams as
so many white sheets torn
from the clothesline
by gale winds, fly over me,
at once angels and vultures
carrying off memories
created from the clay
of surmise and wishful thinking.

I invite their visits, frail
branches to which to cling
in the storms of growing age,
beginnings tenuous anchors
to hold against time, knowing
the battle cannot be won,
but take joy in skirmishes
not to be diminished
by an ultimate failure I
have long come to accept.

March 16, 2022

A SMALL REQUEST

If those in the camps
knowing their fate,
the inevitability
of their impending death
could call up music,
for orchestras, play
or sing with
their final breaths,

is it too much
their ghosts silently
ask, for you
to pause and
remember us,
and sing
a dirge
for our souls.

February 23, 2022

SHOWERS

We sat on our lanai last night
in our twin rockers, the cat
curled close by but carefully
removed from the rockers
and stared into the sky hoping
meteors would grace us
with their fleeting presence.

The moon did appear, shrouded
in thin clouds, spectral ghost
waxing slowly in hiding, but
the stars had fled this night,
fearing the rain that
the cloud mantle promised.

We never did see a meteor
but we know they will return
next year and the cat says
it is hardly worth interrupting
a good nap for a momentary
flash of light, and we just
touched hands and
retreated to bed.

May 26, 2021

HAUNTING MOMENTS

All too soon, I will return
as a ghost and how you
and others deal with that
has yet to be seen, although
know that ghosts are
reflective, and your thoughts
will determine both my presence
and mood during such visits
as I choose to make to you.

You may not believe
in ghosts, I did not for years,
but as you approach
that state of post-being
you realize that ghosts
arrive in dreams and you
are helpless to control them,
so lie back, enjoy me
when I visit, for I have
an eternity of options
too soon at my disposal.

February 26, 2021

A HAUNTING

He said he would ghost me
but I know you don’t tell someone
and in any event, even though
I do not very much like him
I do not wish him dead,
and he wouldn’t make
a very good ghost anyway,
since he barges and not sneaks.

He said he would unfriend me,
but since we were never friends
to begin with, how can you
unfriend someone who barely
considers you an acquaintance,
that feeling no doubt mutual.

He said he might spam me,
but that, too, is hopeless
for I have been a vegetarian
for two plus decades and
did not eat canned spiced
ham spread when I ate meat.

He said he wanted nothing
at all to do with me, and
on that point we fully agreed.

December 15, 2020

A VISIT

I’ve always imagined that one of these nights
I’d see my mother’s ghost. I would welcome the sight
welcome she that bore me, not she that stepped in
in a way,absolving my birth mother of her sin,
while assuming adopting me would make her complete.

She hasn’t visited yet, neither has done so,
but I hold out hope, it is after all the last to go,
and I do hear her voice, faint and all too distant,
sounding very much like my own one instant
and then no more than a faint whisper in retreat.

I don’t need a long conversation, a few words would
more than suffice, but some at least, a child should
in advancing age hear the sound of a mother’s voice,
if only to find solace in the fact that her choice
to yield the child was made from love not defeat.