Blithe Spirit Company

Blithe Spirit Company

My daily walk for exercise has changed;
for there are souls along the path
I have not seen before. Oh yes,
the regulars are there,
and smile at me, too often share
my miseries from ice and snow
and muscles slow to dance in synch
with my advancing age, but these!...
the shy ones...they who subtly appear
before I am aware, and then are gone.
What can I make of them?

They're at the borderline of sight;
they catch that old third eye
designed for sensing—clusters
of old friends at points along my route,
then family I supped with
while the energy of breath prevailed—
the ones I didn't get to say goodbye.
And there they wait
to see me make my rounds,
and Zounds! I don't know why.

Perhaps it is because
I soon will join them
on their vaprous other side
and want to get me ready, or
more probably it is another way
to let me know that they are there,
to catch me in a time when I
am not preoccupied with pleasures,
pain, or measuring my own
crude mortal quest to reach them
from my sterile room.

For on this mobius circle of my walk
I have the luxury of silence plus
the absence of demand, and they are free
to stand beside my route
and unassailed, stretch forth
the lavish purity of love.
~
["Poor Dean", you say; "he's cracking; we'll be gentle
with him, let him keep his imaginary friends. They
are harmless, as is he, so long as we don't get too close."
Ah, fare thee well, my friends, I promise not to drool
on you. And I don't really see them...just 'almost'...and
that was enough to bring on this crazy poem. Yeah,
I think they're there, all right, but I don't stop my
circuitous rounds long enough to talk to them. It's just
that I never knew ghosts could be quite so much fun. :-) ]