It has been a week of ghosts, strangely.
It started with a memorial service for the father of a good friend of mine. A lovely, selfless man who launched me on my career as a writer. That service happened on the tenth anniversary of my sister Sally’s passing. On Thursday, I led an open mic at Al Quaal, a little recreation area in my home town. The open mic was, among other things, in honor the third anniversary of the transition of one of my best friends..
If you’re keeping count, that’s three ghosts.
Sharon Olds writes about the ghost of her daughter . . .
High School Senior
by: Sharon Olds
at night, puff, puff, like summer
cumulus above her bed,
and her scalp smelling of apricots
—this being who had formed within me,
squatted like a wide-eyed tree-frog in the night,
like an eohippus she had come out of history
slowly, through me, into the daylight,
I had the daily sight of her,
like food or air she was there, like a mother.
I say “college,” but I feel as if I cannot tell
the difference between her leaving for college
and our parting forever—I try to see
this apartment without her, without her pure
depth of feeling, without her creek-brown
hair, her daedal hands with their tapered
fingers, her pupils dark as the mourning cloak’s
wing, but I can’t. Seventeen years
ago, in this room, she moved inside me,
I looked at the river, I could not imagine
my life with her. I gazed across the street,
and saw, in the icy winter sun,
a column of steam rush up away from the earth.
There are creatures whose children float away
at birth, and those who throat-feed their young for
weeks and never see them again. My daughter
is free and she is in me—no, my love
of her is in me, moving in my heart,
changing chambers, like something poured
from hand to hand, to be weighed and then reweighed.
Yes, Olds is hearing the tiny, ghostly feet of her daughter pattering around her home. In all truth, I’m in the same boat as Olds. I have a daughter who’s in med school. A son who’s a high school senior AND.a college freshman. My days of hearing little feet patter around my home are long past, unless you count my puppy or the occasional mouse.
I miss my toddler daughter and son. My friend’s father was one of my favorite profs. I think of my sister, Sally, every day of my life. (Sometimes, I think of her hourly, depending on what’s going on in my life.) And my friend—three years gone—well, I hear her voice every time I sit down to write a new poem or watch a fantastic movie or read an inspiring book. All of them have been hovering around all week long.
I start teaching again tomorrow. The start of a new semester. I spent a good portion of yesterday updating my online course content. I’ve got my textbooks packed up, laptop fully charged, and The West Wing playing on the TV. (I’ve started watching the entire series again because I need to see a President of the United States I can get behind—even if said president is fictional.)
Sometimes ghosts aren’t scary. Sometimes they remind you to be a better person. A better husband and father. Better teacher and writer. And a better friend. Maybe that’s what being “scared straight” means.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about dreams, based on the August 20th prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem about a dream that has seven syllables in each line. If you can’t remember your dream, ask a friend, lover, spouse, or child about a dream s/he recently had and write a poem about that. For extra credit, write this poem immediately after waking up in the morning.
Breathing
by: Martin Achatz
Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
— Mary Oliver
I never remember dreams.
They slip away like one-night
stands as soon as I open
my eyes. I can almost hear
the front door closing behind
them, cologne or perfume still
lingering on the pillows.
I want my dreams to hang out,
maybe stick around for eggs
and bacon, or to listen
to morning news, sip coffee,
talk about how amazing
last night was, exchange contact
info that I’ll never use,
because that’s the way dreams are:
they slip away without a
word, walk up the street, vanish
around the corner, leaving
a vague sense you’ve lost something,
some deep, wild, and precious breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment