The Weight of Ghosts

** The Weight of Ghosts * ———————— We do not truly realize how Our lives are so crowded, thick With spirits and messages. We are as yet untuned to know. So, We need to sense the fully living Within from those motioning without Around about and collect them thus Into the backpacks of memory To be the folktales we’ll share In the telling later, as we circling Sit around the campfire’s flames Flickering sparks of security To crack the sealing dark night. Note how it happens unexpectedly: When, maybe every other month Has skated by, and only Then it is realized an instant After the fact…That, caught By the corners of eyesight, “Oh my! I have just seen, it Seems, a ghost strolling by!” Too, (you may smile) those Sights have almost always been The paced gray wisps Of one or the other of A beloved dog or cat that’s come From their vast park-land, Their rolling,green, grassy Freedom t’other side O’ The Bridge, O’ playing chase on high, During which, perchance, as my Intuition senses, the event Of their “visiting” here, Occurs (to them also with some Surprise) as if there were some Unexpected trapdoor-wormholes of Passage between heaven and here… Too, as today, there are the times When ghosts may be coming in my Glimpses of more Than forms sculpted of white dust, Just as it seemed for me, an hour ago While eating my breakfast toast. Here on my being-bedridden hospital bed, With our pups lying set-ready, begging Beside my feet, I was taken From my minute of enjoyable eating By a slight sensation of a lowering Of the bed’s adjustable head. Had its aging mechanism taken A belated final fall? Hmm… But, then, twisting around, I thought I gauged a slight pushing Down of the sheets on the other side Of my pillow, causing me To ponder, “What other presence Comes, it seems mindlessly, Poised begging a taste of toast?” Plus…without the misty, lacy form: Unseen, however, it must be Bearing Weight On my bed, by me! — as, similarly, Twice in my life before, When I had felt — a touching — A tapping on my shoulder, so That I’d turned to see if Anyone were there — although It would seem to be not A question of a Who, but a What? Those presences not glanced, but felt. Not a question of vision, But of touch, of weight. Not of light, but of gravity. Without conclusions, the unfor- Getable instances that I keep With a wondering smile — Of how it can be ever or more That some ghosts might be seen And others would Crinkle the sheets as they stop by? ——————————————————————————————— (c) sally young Eslinger 12/15/21 (Written for Campbell Welch) Thank, Charlie