Let me say right up front that I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe that there is an afterlife, and absent an afterlife, where would ghosts come from?
That said, there was once a ghost. I met him only that once, and I've always regarded him as a symptom of advanced pregnancy combined with high anxiety. He came to me in the night.
I awoke suddenly. It felt as if someone had touched my breast - not gently, not violently, but more like a tap, a simple bid for attention. I looked up, and I saw him - the ghost - hovering a few feet from me. He was sitting cross-legged, tailor-fashion, in mid-air. He looked as startled as I felt.
There was light all around the ghost, and it permeated him. No, perhaps there was light in the ghost and it shone through him. That seems closer to what I saw.
It was a very uncomfortable situation. I glanced over at my husband, who lay sound asleep, then turned back to the ghost. I took my time, noting details - which seems strange to me in retrospect. Shouldn't I have been frightened?
His hair was the palest blond, and he had a moustache. He was dressed all in white, in an undershirt and boxer shorts. He was also wearing white socks. The word 'Edwardian' came to mind. I think his moustache was what gave me that idea. His mouth was gaping open, but not like some horror flick ghost's - more like someone who has been startled. My impression was that he didn't realize I would be able to feel it when he touched my breast.
As I watched him, he floated slowly toward the ceiling. Then he disappeared, like the Cheshire Cat - except he didn't leave a grin behind. That was a mercy.
There. I've confessed it. That is my ghost story. As I said, I chalk it up to pregnancy and anxiety, but at the same time, I remember my ghost rather fondly. I've always wanted to apologize if I frightened him.
I've never felt any real need to lay that particular ghost, as his presence in my life has never been a troubling one. But there are other ghosts, and I'm coming to think that this part of my life is about laying them, putting them in their rightful place.
I went looking through my half-baked poems this morning, and I came across something that isn't a poem at all. I think it's the beginning of the story I have to tell, the story to lay the ghosts.
This is the way of the river, my river. This is its course, the path it takes down from the mountain well-spring, the clean place of beginning. And nothing I wish, nothing I do can alter now its rush, its inevitable journey. I only cling, shivering, to the bank and watch, and wonder at the swiftness of it all, and wonder whether, if I had climbed long ago to the source, the place where my river emerged new and cold and hopeful from the earth I might have held the whole of the river in my cupped hands.
My river rushes, willful and reckless, heedless of the rocks that bar its course. Unfathomable seeker of oblivion, tunneling through shadow, rising triumphant into dazzling light, It washes my grasping fingers and is gone, like words spoken in anger or in love, carried now unresisting, weeping to the deep, forgiving sea.
For more Theme Thursday ghostly posts, click here.
One more thing - I forgot to mention that I have another poem up at The Found Poetry Project. I really like this one.
