GHOST STORIES

 

Visiting the Finnish Lutheran Cemetery,

the small clapboard church leaning wearily toward

the empty highway, my cousin reminds me

of what the gravediggers told her, how the residents here

grow restless in the evening, walking and conversing,

as if not yet settled on this idea of being dead.

"But," she reminds me, by way of disclaimer,

"they have been known to partake in the whiskey."

Everyone has a ghost story around here:

restless ghosts walking the creaking staircase all night,

opening the heavy doors and windows, shaking

the rusty box springs of the bed, or the mischievous one

who locked the unsuspecting dog in the car overnight,

and the stubborn one who followed the family when

the farmhouse burned to the blackened ground.

My ghosts, by contrast, are so reserved, hardly stirring

from their bodies of air, speaking only from the measured

silence of the page, leaving even the dust in its place.

I told you, dear friend, to visit as often as you like,

test your presence in this once-familiar world,

read the poems you wrote when still a teenager,

amused, I would imagine, by what seemed

so important to you then. Haunt me as you like, love.

Come close. Hover, the way you sometimes did

when I worked, if only to see if you are in the words

I have not yet begun to write or understand.

THE AFTERNOON SHE DID NOT DIE

 

Well, we go on -- one hand floating weightless as a balloon,

the body pulling itself downward again.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind,

and the ocean is so vast before us.

Though a residue remains, like soot from

a long-neglected fire or a thumbprint on the soul,

and it belongs the way a bruise belongs,

the way our shadows spark and smolder without us,

solitary, when shut away for the night.

Today I walk with neither haste nor direction,

the sex and the sorrow of sad letter days

discarded, the fact of my name, age, and profession

lost to the angular wind. I carry your words

in one pocket, your silence in the other,

past the once-familiar storefronts of our past,

the soft glow of your childlike face gazing back at me

and back upon itself, a foreign postage stamp

on an antique postcard you bought but never sent.

How can I answer now, knowing this business of words,

this stooge's religion, to be diversion at best?

How can I speak when addressing you now means

addressing any tree, or cloud, or patch of grass?

You have grown vast by way of vanishing.

You always said it was an art, a trick you could not unlearn.

But we go on, each in our separate ways.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind.

But the body is such a stubborn guest,

unwilling to leave, despite the late hour.

We may as well settle in, make up the spare room.

WEDDING DRESS, NEVER WORN, FOR SALE

 

In the newspaper photo, no larger than

a postage stamp, it resembles most

our childhood idea of a ghost, with neither head

nor hands visible, walking away, directionless,

gently billowing from side to side;

or something you might come across

in a museum, a remnant of love and devotion

gone hopelessly out of fashion, pressed

and pinned behind a case of glass.

A thin, watery light, seemingly without source,

softens the edges along one side,

cuts an angle across the torso like the page

from a book suddenly stripped of words.

This is not our story to tell, though

we can't help but imagine the details --

the blistering late night arguments or withering

silence -- which lead, inevitably or not,

to this sudden change of course.

Someone else can slip into the story

now, change the names, rewrite the ending,

all while admiring the intricate stitch work

weaving in and out, the extravagant

and unnecessary ties, beads, and bows,

white cumulous clouds rising at either shoulder,

the small, angled windows of lace

we can very nearly peer through.

ADDICTION

 

You held your secrets close, as gently

as they would allow, as if they, too, were

wounded things, in need of your full and constant

attention, as if keeping them cocooned

in your cool, anemic room kept you both safe.

So much we did not and could not know,

so much you kept even from yourself.

You longed most for respite from this life,

its continual demands, its pettiness and pretense,

the futility you saw in its endless disguises.

You wanted to step outside of it all, time itself

racing past the window glass, frame by crooked frame.

What a shock, then, when it found you unaware.

What a shock when the pills swallowed you.

I still don't understand the simplest things

in this life -- like how to love and be loved without

fear, or how to explain to others that you were

never the measure of your illness alone.

I still don't know if the world, as you might

have said, is so bitter that we must wash it down

with something strong, or so very sweet

and wonderous that we must raise our glasses

again and again. You tell me. You tell me.

AT THE HISTORY CENTER

 

After exploring the wood-paneled rooms furnished with black rotary phones, cocktail trays, and TV consoles the size of refrigerators, my daughter and I climb the narrow ramp into the belly of a World War II C-47 aircraft, sitting for a moment in dim uncertainty, as the ghosts of this craft did decades earlier. We can see the light outside shifting from amber to gray and back again, sense the angled approach of large water, before the wing catches fire and the voices of those men -- hopelessly young -- return, bellowing above bomb blasts, terrified, cursing every God under the sun with words we do not use at home. My daughter clutches my arm, wonders aloud which of her classmates, soon to be entering third grade, would survive such a perilous mission. Only two or three, she decides solemnly. When the silence returns, it is jarring and final, the silence of all those lives, barely begun, layered on top of one another. But I can hear the cries of the soon-to-be dead behind us, starting up again, the same explosions drawing closer from every direction. We walk back into the sunlit lobby, wondering what we will have for lunch. Our sky is blue, and this day -- soon to be part of our past -- open before us.

ASHES

 

For weeks, then months, they sit undisturbed

on a makeshift shelf in your brother's musty garage,

the gray-white residue that once answered

to your name packed neatly into a surprisingly

small cardboard box, unadorned and anonymous.

Drums of exterior paint and car exhaust

surround you now, boxes of tools, and bulky

winter clothing packed in large plastic containers,

the ordinary stuff of life in process.

This is not the respite that I would have wished

or imagined for you, dear friend; though

you will be relieved to know that this stop is not

final, only a way station before the long drive

out of state where you will be scattered,

per your request, out near the railroad tracks

which run the length of your old hometown,

where your mind -- always too sharp and too busy

for its own good -- could wander with neither

weight nor interruption, and your body

could walk and walk never losing its way back.

It's a walk I can't make with you; but should I hear

the call of that Illinois Central, rising

above the chatter of birds and traffic hum,

declaring its own speed and distance, at just

the right angle, I'll say they're playing our song,

as if I could remember the words or tune,

as if the grain and grit of your slender bones

were somehow able to dance again.

THE PAST

 

So much of life is past tense

these days, even when spoken of

in what passes for the here and now.

So much becomes after the fact,

though the facts themselves

remain anything but clear.

I still look for you when I enter

those musty white rooms,

my mind waltzing between what

I know and all that I cannot.

You know I never learned to dance,

or to feign forgetfulness.

But the past no longer requires

our presence, no matter how often

we wander through, touching

one item, then another, as if we

might be found within them.

Our fingerprints stick to nothing.