11-4

[whitereflection]

Xmas

Halloween isn't the most haunted time of year.
All the ghosts come out at Christmas,
carrying orange bulb candelabra will-o'-wisps to dance
in the corners of my eyes. They'll bring a feast
of turkey and stuffing and pie made with
instant pudding and Cool Whip, and they'll drink
cheap port wine with ice in it, or maybe martinis
with the pimento green olives
(and the black olives will end up on someone's fingers or
inside someone's navel because the ghosts are
strange also). Pictures always show spirits wearing
sheets; mine are draped in white trash bags
and cigarette haze for ectoplasmic vapor.
They don't howl or moan (though one laughs like a goosehonk),
but rattle my skull with Sousa marches
because we were all supposed to pay attention to what he liked
because he demanded it, even if it made the house shake;
and when his ghost naps in the recliner the dead will
be as silent as everyone was back then, and we living will be, too.
The basement will be the most haunted, because of the kids' table,
and the grown-up ghosts come down more and more often
to get away. Then there won't be any kids anymore, not even shades of them.
There's kids again now, but not in the basement
with the ghosts: they're cut and pasted into someone else's house.
The ghosts will find us there eventually.
They'll make a bay window where there isn't one, to stand at and wave
in the orange bulb candelabra glow
when I drive away to go home.