Poem: A Ghost Leads Him

 

A Ghost Leads Him

 

this elder he

touches but does not,

this psychopomp

who exists but no,

 

she flies through his memory,

salvaging its refugees,

until they incandesce and

collapse into wings now a

possessed guitarist and pianist,

playing a song never composed.

 

this daredevil, arching in his veins,

she streaks to push the rollercoaster higher and higher

through fervor and flight

 

(this ekg, this oscilloscope...)

 

as if his passions 

had always been prisoners of the dull, 

and only now, swift in swerves of release,

could the mortar of his jail cell 

crumble into blameworthy bricks--

 

(his life, too much, was spent within walls...)

 

rectangles of stone.  wood, too, and plaster. 

he buried so much of himself

in such a sturdy habitat so long ago

but now

 

(but now ...)

 

a path lifts above the rubble,

a new kind of steppingstone,  

back upward, 

toward some long-ago wounded 

and yet forgiving and dependable 

joy.

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8/10/25 .. 

10/7/24 eds