Come Ghosts

(Having read a book recently that involved several characters looking back upon their lives, I was inspired to write this).

Thus they loom toward my mortal precipice,
arranged around my bedside, the spectres of a life,
whose auras fade or flare as with my faltering mentality
as I consider the who, the where, the what
and how they made me smile or cry or frown or not.


Some are angels, perfect beauteous girls, nubile in youth
that flit amongst my other ghosts as if to tease.
Whilst others beneath a darker hue of worried looks and woeful mouths
hold tarnished scales that hang askew,
my life’s account laid bare, all spent and nothing due.


Side by side the velvet kisses and sharp daggers find their mark,
virgins’ tears bedfellow with wicked hateful scowls,
and I, a poor man’s Jesus figurine accepting both with equal grace,
begin to feel an icy breath surround my fingers, ears and toes,
my ghosts like unfulfilled disciples turn and go.


©Graham Sherwood 10/2010

Loss

(How easy it is for inanimate objects to become part of one's family).

We have modernised.
Gone, dining table and faded velour chairs.
We turn away hesitantly, guiltily from the porch
so as not to watch
the battered rusty recycling van,
eagerly carry away our beloved.
The bearer of our family’s growth
our happiness, our joy and tears,
those thirty-five Christmas meals
two special weddings
one hideous wake.
Untouched, the gouged evidence of Rosie’s claws,
sweet pup,
and time arrested when John slumped forward
slipping underneath, mouth still full of food
a seizure said Dr McBride.
A thousand happy winey nights
each anniversary chalked up,
and her,
each time rewarded with a brand new coat
of beeswax polish and elbow grease,
like this one last time
face aglow, and sent out
into drizzle like our children were
on their first days at school.
Peering around the door
and there, the modern oak imposter
yet, with no stories to tell
and eight conspiratorial leather accomplices.
What have we done?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2010