Ghosts rise in the early hours
to forage the tracks for lost properties
and the spent electrics of wasted journeys
that turn to dust on the text of an apology
discarded on departure by a broken man.
They'll risk life and limb to save a glove
abandoned by a hand that touched so many,
to hang on a hook like a dead bird
in the archive of discarded pasts.
Out there beyond the bridges and cable life
the longing for other places.
A northbound woman's diary records
an out of body experience assembled
in the dreaming parish of the penultimate stop,
where she saw her lover blindfolded
on the southbound platform preparing
his arms to meet another.
Having given up so much she carried on
to the town he promised would be hers,
to redistribute her life strategically
through the classifieds.
Ghosts collect the evidence a stranger
leaves behind to reconstruct a life
of broken promises and departures,
a case history to report to the outside world
falling about the star studded streets
of unlicensed fights and fleapits where
ghosts wander from theatre to theatre
like unstitched patients searching
for the lost nerve of the surgeon
who failed to complete the operation.
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A dog barks across the ochre distillery
of a late sun autumn afternoon
at the wild butchers gun gaming
the parliment of parish rooks.
A white plume of smoke rises
from a damp fire a cured old man
cooks on tobacco land of solitude and sheds,
where grandfathers study and keep the peace.
Soon when all the burning's done
and children take the ashes home
to scatter over our traditions,
the congregation kneels and measures
the duration of its service.
The stormcock's north gives winter
a cold church in which to shelter,
the old man finds a stick to poke
the meter of the season,
counting the days
staining his wood darker.