Now all our ghosts are leaving us,
their absence neatly packed
with chilling cries and slamming doors.
We lack their fuelling lack.
But how, you ask, and wait, aren’t ghosts
required to serve our fear?
Why would a disappearance flee
and wholly disappear?
Perhaps they’re jealous of the ghosts
invented for our screens.
Or maybe our new houses sap
the meaning from their screams.
Another theory runs that ghosts
all need a past to nurture.
Another states they vanish with
the crumbling of the future.
But what, you wonder, who and where
will all our ghosts now haunt?
Aren’t we the food they need to thrive
invisible and gaunt?
Well, some are seeking deserts bright
to drift as dust’s best child.
And some are after shadowed growth
to nurse forgotten wilds.
While others journey through the earth
to swell their dead inside.
And others skyward rise to pass
their days as cumuli.
There’s one, I’ve heard, who took your form
—like winter dressed as spring.
Disguised as human, faking lungs,
it draws a breath and sings:
“Now all us ghosts are leaving you,
our absence neatly packed
with chilling cries and slamming doors.
How will you bring us back?”
Image: Puppets by Paul Klee named the Ghost of a Scarecrow, Electrical Spook, and Mr Death — Source: Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (CC BY-SA 4.0).