This night
in cold moonlight
earth rises up
clouds float down
ghosts walk the margin.
Old ones sing
now shall be then
older ones still sing
then shall be once
to wolf and coyote.
In this season of north winds
sun’s heat barren
spirits rise up
dreams descend
man lies interspersed.
Women sing
we are bearers
men sing
we are sowers.
First appeared in Dipity, Vol. 3, April 2023
With the stroke of a pen,
they enabled me to write the story,
gave a framework on which
I could hang all manner
of dreams and assumptions,
inviting a search I never
quite got around to making.
I wandered the beaches
of Estoril in my dreams,
stalked the avenues of Lisbon,
looking for a familiar face,
but found only ghosts.
With the stroke of a swab
inside my cheek, a vial
of saliva mailed, the story
came apart, and a new story
slowly unfolded, gone forever
was Iberia, replaced by Scotland
and Ireland, Wales, Norway
and Germany, and my dreams
were filled with the music
of the bodhran and Highland pipes.
Living in a bamboo grove, she said,
is very much like living in an old house.
Look up at noon, into the canopy
and imagine you see rays of light
piercing the ill-thatched roof.
Listen to the growling winds of autumn
and hear the ghosts of the old house
making their way up creaking stairs.
And when you truly find the silence
imagine the Buddha sitting nearby
the morning breeze his breath
slowly drawing you into the day.
I am a child of ghosts, my parents
adopted and birth, all visit me,
but only in my dreams, for ghosts
prefer the reality that dreams allow.
Some say that dreams are not real,
but they live in the mind as do
every other reality I experience
each day, my senses merely
inexact lenses for the mind.
Perhaps dreams are more accurate,
a deeper reality in the end,
for they arise without passing
through the lenses of the senses,
whole and complete, and as quickly gone.
I am a child of ghosts, and I
will eventually join them,
haunting the dreams of others.
My ancestors stole your tongue
and left you mute in a world
you could not grasp.
Now
as I search for words of forgiveness
I can find none, for my voice
is clogged with foreign phrases
that once told of your ancestors
who lived amid these rocks.
We schooled you, stealing
your spirit, which whispers to us
as the sun climbs slowly
over the great stone set deep
into the endless desert.
When the wind comes down
from the north, it sings a song
which cuts through our coats
and deeply into our bones.
There is no one who will claim us
when we are plundered for display
in some museum, no one to sing
a blessing to ward off the spirits
that will haunt us into the next life.
The ghosts of your people walk
among us and we can, at last,
hear their whispered entreaties
carried on the wind
deep into the canyon.
The sooty snow
blankets the fields
blowing like
a still ocean
off the precipice
of the horizon.
The clouds
of ash tinged cotton
hug the earth
a blanket
under which all life
finds refuge
from the ghosts
of winter.
To the wanderer
which the cave mouth
which the cave?
the ghosts of morning
cast their spell over the sun
joyous winter smiles
first snow of winter
white coated Buddha dreaming
of chrysanthemums
each flake different
a billion unique moments
a Buddhist season
an old writer and his words 