Ghosts at Christmas

[Silent Night / Chet Baker & Christpher Mason]

My grandmother will not go away.

Years ago, she waited for the weekly

Visit my mother and I would make

After work. On the wall over her bed

Hung a reproduction of “Blue Boy,”

The one tactless possession that she kept

As the room and she grew smaller.

 

Having been a nurse during the Great War,

She understood and chatted with

Her keepers as they too became

Part of her extended family. Whoever

Came to her door, or to her room,

Was welcome and went away well fed

After a tender conversation.

 

Now when she visits late at night,

She wants me out of bed to plant

Tomatoes in the back yard, but

I have no back yard, only a rock

Parking lot. I ask if she’s tracked down

My grandfather, whose death so haunted

Her, and she blushes until she disappears.

I appreciate my grandmother’s final confusions.

Aging’s a process of giving up, but when nobody

Visits, I wonder what I’m still hanging around for.

Fruit of the month comes in the mail, not

From the back yard, and I’ve never been able

To grow anything, not even children,

And all I have left are ghosts at Christmas.

[Disposable Poem December 13, 2015]

Dr. Mike

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