Reappearing Poem

You can listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/5wTVf

I knew we wouldn’t see the shut of year

But nor had we seen it start, to be clear.

We bopped about in the other months, snarfing

And fluttering between intervals.

February had its dinners and dainties but

March brought such a nebula

As you planned America.

Your change was ready, so

Good riddance (I told myself and winced)

Yet something stopped you from going,

To my surprise.  I prayed it was me but

How grand I imagined my part in your life.

Spring ended well and summer arrived

With coastal walks and coordinated graveyard adventures

Checking headstones of those known by neither of us

To find someone well known to both of us –

That writer long dead, not forgotten.

By September’s fold, the ghosts had risen, fully

Awakened by our sweeping grief

In time for the season of wind and leaf,

Cold spirits and moods from other worlds –

Though known well by both of us –

Emerging from the hearth of our world

Like faces in the restaurant, unsmiling

Very apt in questioning our resolve

For December would definitely fail to greet us.

You know the thing about ghosts: they reappear

Such is also the way with wow and flutter

And poems like this one too.

Like this year’s one – another poem to think of you.

How grand it imagines its part in your life.

It will sit beside you at the funeral.

I promise to take the other seat

On the other side.  And when the poem

Isn’t looking, a kind tap on your arm.

‘Let’s go,’ I say to you.  And we do.

Image: Photo taken by author