Goodbye ghosts

Good-bye ghosts.

Black and white ghosts.

Some familiar, some not.

Ghosts that hung out on the corner

Of where there has been no corner for 50 years.

Ghosts in letters, ghosts next to new old cars.

Young cocky men with cigarettes

Who will be old and sitting on stoops

In another box of photos.

Ghosts of dogs that romped once upon a time.

Babies in buggies

That became uncle and aunt so and so.

And there is the summer cottage

That famously burned down

The year before the war.

Which war? You ask.

Exactly.

Good-bye ghosts.

Ghosts of books

That I can no longer recommend

Any more than I can recommend the path I took

For which they were stepping stones.

I mean it. Nobody cares anymore.

Not even me.

You must forgive me ghosts.

Where you are now

There will be space.

I hope we fill it well.

And I hope you are really as dead

As you seem.
...................................................