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Arwyn Evans

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Haibun: Ghosts

Come with him tonight, to a fishing inn along the Wye. To an upstairs room that overlooks the water-meadows and the road. Stand before this unlocked cupboard and just look:

Here is a pair of drooping waders, owned by Mr Smith. Keep them, he said when he last left. If I don’t use them at Three Cocks I won’t use them at all.

There stands a salmon rod, yellow stained with age. It belonged to Mr Topjoint. When he stopped visiting, the Lady of the House wrote to his last address. She had no reply.

Here is a mildewed basket and a moth-chewed book of flies. Property of Reverend Snapgut, salmon catcher of renown. Drowned in Australia or some such place.

See the cracked boots, the tattered landing net and rusty gaff. The battered hat still shaped to fit a sweating head. Waiting. All waiting for the gentleman. In case they ever should.

Tonight there is no fire in the grate. The wind around the chimney mourns. Rain beats from the river on the window glass. But stand and look with him:

The room will shadow with their forms. Will fill again with flickering warmth. The smell of whisky and tobacco smoke. The humour of their after spinner tales.

Tonight
            perhaps
we are the cast of ghosts

 


(Distilled from AGBradley and first published as a prose poem by the Anglo-Welsh Poetry Society in the Anthology Common Source, February 2000)

 

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