Author Information
Visit To A Haunted House
Too slender to be macho,
your life has followed another arc,
not always pleasant but definitely rewarding.
From the platform of this summer after graduation,
you can view the years of your education
and the bullying that ceased only two years ago.
Your long hair is no longer too long.
The brightly white shirt and bell bottom jeans are not
too casually expressive of too much disrespect
(although your father might demand that you
"tuck them tails into your britches,
"and button the cuffs on them sleeves").
Upon entering this reputed haunted house,
you have put your sneakers and white socks off,
outside, on the ancient, weather-worn porch.
The polished, hardwood floor within
is surprisingly cool, comfortable and unthreatening
(no possibility of splinters or other flesh wounds).
Lean against the tall, oaken bookcase full of volumes
and listen to the A.M. radio in your pocket---
playing, right now, "Son Of A Preacher Man."
The C.B. radio in your '67 Pontiac
was playing all sorts of conversations before you came in.
Your father despises the C.B. radio:
it reminds him of his origins
before the management money came skulking, stalking, in.
Now she, your Beloved, has noticed
the sign, early agreed upon, of your entry---
your shoes and white socks left on the porch:
inviting her to join you here.
Clad in her customarily long denim skirt,
she has left her flip-flops behind for this visit
(left behind with the criticisms of her curves).
Her grass-stained soles are gliding eagerly to you.
The house is not really haunted, not in the way people think.
No one was murdered or raped here; no one died
alone, of natural causes, or was abandoned to death, either.
This was a poet's house once, in a village
where poetry is not respected, nor was, nor ever taught
in the high school---at least since anyone can remember.
The hauntings in this house are, instead, the poet's poems:
these come to you and your Lady on tablets set forth from stars.
The poems rejoice to welcome the two of you
who have stepped, barefoot, from the shod, mundane world
into the poetic reality, without the least hesitation or fear.
They suggest to you---these poems, excited
by the couple they have waited long to celebrate
(the plural implied in the contours of their lines)---
that both of you are most vitally, vivaciously alive;
and the obstinate villagers among whom you dwell,
the obstutue hooligans of prejudice
are (so much unlike the two of you)
the soul-less, shambling, chattering, fornicating dead.
Starward
