Sleep

An ox plows a hillside field
A farmer harvests wheat
A shepherd leads his sheep
And your ghost haunts my sleep.

Memories

memories are bones we find

inside unmarked burial grounds
when digging for fresh water

memories are Frankensteins
fragments forced into sense
their last words your lips her scent

memories are misleading brochures
tales with no beginnings and no ends
sickly ghosts needing doctors or priests

memories are abandoned rusting rails
they’re circuses of snapshots and sounds
floundering zoos of beauties and beasts

memories stretch from depths of the brain
through blood and flesh and through bones
like a meandering poem looking for home

Haiku

I free my macaw
It knows my ancestor's ghost
That palm smiles and cracks

Yvette and Val

Yvette and Val were left behind.
Yvette was blind
but Val was brown
and new in town.

Yvette turned Barbie for the night
and stood in light,
alone near Val
her ghostly pal.

Alarming masks appear and fade.
She's not afraid,
been touched before.
She shuts the door.

The Ghosts of a Room

When the moon shines red
And the darks cascade
When the length of room
Has become light years

When the ghostly hush
In the silence yawns
Through a hollow tune
With the breeze for tongue

Now compassion swoops
Through the cloud of tears
Down on injured hearts
Filled with lonely fears

Filled with homeless rage
And a scalding shame
And strangled with guilt
Of venom-clawed blame

Then compassion flies
With the hearts in beak
Over ruby lakes
What is there to seek?

Soon the wordless room
Breathes the scented dawn
Everything the same
But the dew-kissed lawn

Shoulds and ifs and whys
Never here reside
Outside the window
Of the room inside

Only lady bugs
And where grass now parts
There the earthworms romp
Wee-little, their hearts.