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Ghost
By Michael Parker
The winter storm has settled above me like a dark continent,
aubergine and gray, and has eaten the moon and her children.
The oracles, because of this, are choked and diminished.
The house of the hush and hush is set askew; and
the portals stationed in the mirrors and dark tapestries on the wall
are thrown open to other distant regions, even to the Underworld.
At its dim core, the thinnest threads of light are swallowed,
I can hear the faint moaning and cumbrous lullabies of
Night’s naked shades: the faceless shadows which stick fast
to their caliginous places as if waiting for friends or loved ones.
In these surroundings, I fear not because this is my home and
Night is soft and gathers me roundly in her obsidian wings.
Pacing the rooms and halls tonight, I look at myself in passing windows and mirrors.
I am thinner, a ghost of my former days. My lungs are full of stones.
To draw a breath, I must draw in the circumference of the moon.
A shade catches my eye in a mirror. Long as the room, crooked,
cadaverous, he is drawn and pale, as if his cloak were the weave of
shadows behind dead trees, from the hideous corners of haunted halls
or an ailing evening. Sad reality strikes me:
I have known this solitary apparition my entire life.
Copyright ©
Michael Parker
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