and I was just going to go sing that Gertie house song

Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al.

I've sensed ghosts more than once,
    their presence
a kind of plucking from the memorious air.

Always they reveal themselves as lost,
    surviving
on what's loose in me, some last words

I never said, some I did. I've heard
    they can't live
if fully embraced, if taken fully in,

yet I do nothing but listen to their
    wingless hovering,
the everything they never say.

If only I could give them what they need,
    no, if only
I could convince myself these things

must die as naturally as apples
    on the apple tree...
but that's Nature, which is never

wrong, just thoughtless and without shame.


-- Stephen Dunn


x-posted to greatpoets

and I was just going to go sing that Gertie house song

Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al.

I've sensed ghosts more than once,
    their presence
a kind of plucking from the memorious air.

Always they reveal themselves as lost,
    surviving
on what's loose in me, some last words

I never said, some I did. I've heard
    they can't live
if fully embraced, if taken fully in,

yet I do nothing but listen to their
    wingless hovering,
the everything they never say.

If only I could give them what they need,
    no, if only
I could convince myself these things

must die as naturally as apples
    on the apple tree...
but that's Nature, which is never

wrong, just thoughtless and without shame.


-- Stephen Dunn


x-posted to greatpoets