Ghost Poem by Vona Groarke

Ghost Poem 

Crowded at my window tonight, your ghosts

will have nothing to speak of but love

though the long grass leading to my door

is parted neither by you leaving

 

nor by you coming here. The same ghosts

keep in with my blood, the way

a small name says itself, over

and over, so one minute is cavernous

 

compared to the next, and I cannot locate

words enough to tell you your wrist

on my breast had the same two sounds to it.

You are a sky over narrow water

 

and the ghosts at my window

are a full day until I shed their loss.

I want to tell you all their bone-white,

straight-line prophecies

 

but the thought of you, this and every night,

is your veins in silverpoint mapped

on my skin, your life on mine,

that I made up and lived inside, as real,

 

and I find I cannot speak of love

or any of its wind-torn ghosts to you

who promised warm sheets and a candle, lit,

but promised me in words.