Tale of the Ghost

I have been pounded upon and plied against,

yet I am not the steel of the world.

On some hard day I may have been too abrasive,

yet I am not the flint of the world.

Despite moments of reason, laughter or gaiety,

I certainly am not the air of the world.

My love, or ire, can burn as hot as any,

yet I am not the heat of the world.

I may be more than the ether,

a trick of sound and light,

but I am not the stuff of the world.

I am barely a mote,

in time or space or thought,

in dream or plan or consequence.

I am not even a cog in the grand machine

as it would run forward,

unaltered, with or without me.

I simply sit on the periphery

in horrified and hopeless agitation

and gaze at the tinder of the world.

Perhaps I have sat here

and too pondered at your beauty

and found it beyond the depth of my heart.

Or I sat here stunned at the fluidity and bounty of your reason

and envied your insight and humor.

Maybe it was simply your spirit that touched my soul

and made me strain and marvel.

In some scope, in some space, in some time,

I have loved and respected and treasured you, my friend.

Neither of us have moved or been taken or left,

yet already I miss you and have always missed you.

I put down the flowers, for you, or for me,

or for us, or for all of us, I am not sure.

And I go about gliding from room to room,

from place to place, barely lifting the dust.

Don’t ask me who. I do not know.

Don’t ask me why. I don’t know that either.

But run, run and tell the tale of the ghost

you saw or heard or felt.

For the only weight I may ever know

is in the telling