The Ghosts of my Life (Poetry Monthly)

The ghost of the wind

In the wind everything blows

A bucket and spade

A child’s shoe

Up and away

Wild in the air

With movement

That no one can stop

With certain abandon

To whatever comes next

And there are giggles

And secrets

And sad bits

But you’re there in the air

With your mummy and daddy

And there’s safety sometimes

In the centre of the storm

And I picture

A red scarf and mittens burnt by sparklers

I spiral rise and zigzag fall

Like a kite on a beach

On a grey sea morning

 

The ghost on the hill

On the old pit hill

The air is nose-snapping

Finger-slicing

Sharp

My dad is walking ahead of me

Talking

About the mines closing

And the pride of the men

Their stoicism

Their anger then acceptance

His voice when it reaches me goes

Wah wah wah

Charlie Brown teacher-like

And the flecks of tobacco

From his pipe

Sully my hair

And I wish he’d talk more about me

Talk to me

Because one day he’ll be gone

One day I’ll be gone

And will we have said

All the things

We need to?

 

The ghost in the kitchen

In her kitchen

She’s forgotten

Where everything is

She knows she went there

For a reason

But everything is strange

She’s had a headache

For days

And the world is

Technicolor pain

The mugs on the tree

The gleam of the copper

On the thing she thinks

Is called a kettle

She stands on the rush matting

With all the cupboard doors open

Seeing shapes and forms

That make no sense

Her friend and her daughter

Both strangers to her

Put their arms around her

And she flinches

As they guide her

To her chair

And she’s remembering

When she was a girl

On the Derbyshire farm

And the round-stone wall

Was her horse

 

The ghosts under the earth

And surely ghosts

Should be slight enough

To escape

From the rain-sodden red

Of the clay earth?

To slip between

The holes in worm-casts?

The cracks between stones?

But my ghosts have weight

And ballast

They hold me down

The bastards

They’re restless

And wicked

And heavy on my chest

Not wispy moths

Nor harebells

Or Bronte sleepers

Under

That quiet earth

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOW4-oWnDPw