The responsibility lies with the ghosts who never lie down.
The ghosts
who tint the Sunday street or the Monday morning kitchen
in the shades of having been there before,
the déjà vu of it all.

And I have been.
There before.
Back when the trees weren’t this old, and the light was whiter.

These are the memory places, visited from behind gauzy curtains
almost clear
more feeling than fact
too ethereal to hold onto or describe even to someone who might understand.
Because
the ghosts who arrange these visits do not limit them to one episode
but create a collage of many moments many people many moods,
all butted up, bumped against each other like commuters in a crowded subway,
loosely connected in the space
and by their sensations and sorrows.

The ghosts collaborate.
Whole committees.
Each member adding their own spin,
until teasing out the why of the feeling awakened by a particular place at a particular time
resists definition.

And yet it remains with you.
Another multilayered pearl
in the strands of what used to be.

 

Susan E. Bartlett has been writing poetry since she discovered Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Her poetry has ranged from teenage rants to aging introspection, with excursions to in-between life in the generational sandwich. She delights in the wackiness and wonder of the natural world, where the simplicity of her dog grounds her.