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