Ghost: In The Garden

Emily Dickinson
1830 - 1886

I have tried to avoid you

to step politely around those frigid spaces
you inhabit.

You smile nebulously
timid, but determined, as a wren.

It is only the cold drafts
which separate us, you whisper.

I can feel you, so often
as you peer over my shoulder
study the words

the black shadows on the white sheet

...contrast
you like contrast...

me, a dark-haired Italian of passion
my blood Mediterranean warm

you, the Belle of Amherst
quiet and self-contained in your white habit
as you hover over my poems

...you flinch

a word too many

a word misplaced

the wrong word...

your fingers twitch.

You want to cross over again
but the ferryman refuses.

You set your lip…
sigh.

I can feel it…
feel you concocting a plan

a way to get back to your earthly words.

Now, when my hand writes
I feel your hand guiding it, sister...

a collaboration of spirits
outside of the fathers' heaven -

heaven in your own garden
in mine.

One of a three-poem sequence which was awarded
Phi Theta Kappa's 1997 Nota Bene "Citation Award"