Poem: A Ghost Leads Him

 

A Ghost Leads Him

 

this elder he

touches but does not,

this psychopomp

who exists but no,

 

it flies through his memory,

salves its refugees,

until they incandesce

and collapse into a past now a

possessed accordion,

playing a song never composed.

 

this daredevil in his breath, his arched veins,

it streaks to push a rollercoaster higher and higher

through fervor and flight.

 

(this EKG, this oscilloscope, this cardiac peak ...)

 

as if his passionate extremes

had always been prisoners of a dull conformity

and only now by freeing them

can the mortar of the cells of his jail 

crumble into blameworthy bricks--

 

(so much of his life was spent in brick ... )

 

rectangles of wood and stone.

he buried so much of himself

in a sturdy habitat long ago.

but now

 

(but now ...)

 

an aerial path flies through the rubble,

a new kind of steppingstone,  

back upward, 

toward some long-ago wounded 

and yet dependable and honest 

joy.

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10/7/24 eds