The Ghost

“The Ghost”

You, you’re sleeping across the sea
While I am waking from strange dreams.
I saw no one whose faces I have known
But somehow you were there.

Still hours stand on the rising sun;
Their footfall echoes on the pallid sky.
My tears this morn have broken
Through veils of gilded haze.

There is the figure of a specter standing
In a breath that gathers the leaves.
How it sways upon the winds of dawn.
Does this breeze reach your distant shore?

The ghost speaks in words I spoke before,
Words that have haunted all my days—
Eyes filled by deeds secreted in my own heart
That I have ruined by my design.

If I allow the ghost to enter as it has followed
The ache of time shall be laid bare—
What I have done while you have slept
Is in the voice that calls me from the other side.

Yet you would forgive what I cannot forgive
In myself where there was always pain—
The years you watched me leave you behind
While in my heart, there was a blade.

I can’t confess. The ghost confesses for me
With the voice that begged me to never walk away.
From far off isles, you fly with wings of light
To the darkness that surrounds the rose.

I envy you feel no burdens such as mine:
The ghost of all I cannot lay to rest,
Walking the grasses below the trees
On the threshold, begging to enter.


© 2022 Marten Hoyle