Blithe Spirit Company

My daily walk for exercise has changed; for there are souls along the path I have not seen before. Oh yes, the regulars are there, and smile at me, too often share my miseries from ice and snow and muscles slow to dance in synch with my advancing age, but these!... the shy ones...they who subtly appear before I am aware, and then are gone. What can I make of them? They're at the borderline of sight; they catch that old third eye designed for sensing—clusters of old friends at points along my route, then family I supped with while the energy of breath prevailed— the ones I didn't get to say goodbye. And there they wait to see me make my rounds, and Zounds! I don't know why. Perhaps it is because I soon will join them on their vaprous other side and want to get me ready, or more probably it is another way to let me know that they are there, to catch me in a time when I am not preoccupied with pleasures, pain, or measuring my own crude mortal quest to reach them from my sterile room. For on this mobius circle of my walk I have the luxury of silence plus the absence of demand, and they are free to stand beside my route and unassailed, stretch forth the lavish purity of love. ~ ["Poor Dean", you say; "he's cracking; we'll be gentle with him, let him keep his imaginary friends. They are harmless, as is he, so long as we don't get too close." Ah, fare thee well, my friends, I promise not to drool on you. And I don't really see them...ju st 'almost'... and that was enough to bring on this crazy poem. Yeah, I think they're there, all right, but I don't stop my circuitous rounds long enough to talk to them. It's just that I never knew ghosts could be quite so much fun. :-) ]