There are no ghosts here.
Only the detritus of seasons past,
sun-bleached brown feeding violent
bursts of green growth, a native uprising
threatening to devour the bones & body of
my home as if it were already dead:
a corpse by contrast.
Only the evidence of another's
carefully cultivated civility lingers, a
one-sided imposition of politeness where
wilderness presses up against the edges,
where raspberries, now, run rampant: red
thorned raiders reclaiming territory
never willingly surrendered,
never really mine to return.
I spoke to the trees
while their branches were barren,
while they painted black lace onto
the dusk-dark sky. I approached on
bare feet buried in a half-acre of
damp grass and watched, wide-eyed,
while they danced their greetings
to the night, to this stranger
invading their long-held land.
I acknowledged their dominion.
I noted my own.
They answered with insects, with saplings
shot through wooden stairs, with wisteria
holding fast to lights I can't plug in anymore.
They answered with a bounty of berries in July,
with grass that grows too fast and ladybugs who
crawl across my bathroom mirror, who die
in irreverent piles on dingy windowsills.
They gave me a title I didn't recognize, a duty
I fulfilled without knowing.
They sent emissaries.
Death came as a cat, matted & ghastly grey,
half-absent jaw gaping, pale eyes terrified.
The Wayward sent a displaced racing pigeon,
far from home and starving, tagged & tired.
They all sent representatives:
the Vermin, beneath notice;
the Colony, feral and wary.
Still, there are no ghosts here.
Only the dead & dying, only the
short-lived and long-suffering.
Only the patient earth and the
black-lace trees, dead leaves and
new shoots. Change and its agents.
An accord and its witness.