Ghost Talking
Dreamt of an interrupted road
severed by train rails and chain-link fence,
a way thru now struck dead.
On the other side, a deserted house,
colonial, white with black shutters,
windows mostly broken,
a grandmother forgotten.
As I stood, the old rattle seed shook and whispered to the burrs and dried thistle.
Then, a muted whoosh, the whip of the express
flashing by and departing as quickly,
leaving the weeds and old lady alone again.
Here’s a memory (my mother says):
When I was twelve,
my mother died, breast cancer, a certain death in 1955.
I took a Chock Full O’Nuts can from the trash
and on slips of paper
torn from my father’s insurance company letterhead,
I wrote to her.
For two years,
I asked her questions,
complained,
informed her of
my comings and goings.
But when my father remarried,
four kids too much for a widower in ’57,
I squeezed the can into a knot hole of the tree in our backyard,
stashing away all I’d written,
untrusting of this new life my father had chosen.
In 1987, that tree,
belonging now to my youngest brother, and the house too,
was struck by lightning and died.
He cut it to stove lengths for the next winter and
discovered the can,
half-crushed and rusted.
He called on the telephone,
I have something for you.
This something I thought a secret from my siblings known all along.
I drove over there the next Sunday afternoon,
alone for once,
without a husband or children in tow.
We sat at an old picnic bench in the yard and wrested it open with a
screwdriver and pliers.
What did we find?
Nothing but bits and dust.
Yesterday,
my mother seemed relieved to see me as I walked into her kitchen.
I’m surprised you found me, she whispered.
This old woman who seems to remember so little,
the things that stick, so strange and fantastic.