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Robin Fulton

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Haunts

We were the first to live in the new house,
warm ancestors to the faint ghosts
whose fingerprints will never leave the wood.
The estate thrives, divides and multiplies:
out at the edge an empty shell of flats
is full of the night wind, howling like ruins.

I am my own sufficient ghost. I hatch
catastrophe after catastrophe
as the evening tangles, at last lie
intent on the nest of silence I imagine
in an empty room in an empty house in a storm,
deep-breathing away my shallow terrors.

only to crawl through dream tunnels
not knowing they are dreams. I find
a way from one labyrinth to the next
with a dazed assurance that would win prizes
in daylight though what happens here
would not in daylight do me credit.

Morning. I drive through spring snow,
flakes big as hands, all opaque,
Another dimension seeping through to ours -
am I thankful enough I can't see,
the gaps in the air are not transparent ?
The street happens to me and the day follows.


 

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