Dead Reckoning

Living near a graveyard

Sounded a good idea:

Not far to walk

If you need fresh air.

Stones don’t depress me;

It’s people that do.

There are far too many

And they look like you.

With the dead,

You know where you are:

They understand

What silence means;

Yet don’t complain

If you hold wild parties,

Or scream in the rain.

The odd ghost you meet

On those cemetery strolls

Where life appears abstract

Is strangely polite.

Even the headless ones

Raise their hats.

Spooks can be obliging

With directions

(Where am I buried?);

And endlessly patient,

Knowing (unlike us)

That time leads nowhere,

And worrying’s no use.

Their jokes aren’t as funny,

But that's no excuse.

Pater Familias

You keep popping up

In the strangest places.

Walking into a room,

Your face appears,

Smiling the same odd way.

Real or not,

I know you’re there.

My shadow everywhere

Bumps into yours.

I hear your voice

Through doors

Long closed.

Even the dark

Assumes your shape;

You’re here so much,

The monsters under the bed

Have been complaining.

Γέρωντος

for my Father

How must it have been for you,

Growing up all those years

When truth made sense,

Despite war, chaos, death,

The stuff you’d read at school;

The turning of the spheres,

Like some vast cinematic reel,

As time swept by;

And, later, love.

Gazing at the screen,

You saw the years implode

Into a storm of doubt,

Obscuring the past;

And soon the walls of certainty

Came tumbling down:

Truth, power, authority, respect.

You took your sword stick from its case

And marched the streets

Scowling at the young.

We scoffed at your vision then,

As you might gaze on ours:

Caught up in novelty, like tourists,

Clicking away at every world of choice,

As if photography

Will save us.