Scott Ferry

my daughter tells me she sees a ghost

rushing past our front window
but only out of the corner of her eye
as she is doing something unusual
like wiping up spilled water from the dining table
then flash it runs towards the door
but whenever she looks there is no one
on the porch or in the street

today my son watches television
and i pick up a toy near the computer
and a grey shadow flies across the evening light
faster than a person would walk
but slower than a run and i open the door
thinking my daughter is home
darting from the car

but as the sun comes in through the opening
there are no dark places moving
only spring filtered through japanese andromeda
only a still air like the held breath of someone hiding
in the faint reflections and blind runways
a child maybe searching for a secret place
under all places or a woman fleeing
from a familiar evil scared to show her colors

or a man inside a lost photograph of himself
eaten by time but returning to mail that letter
that would never arrive but i can feel an absence
only felt when someone is concealed
within themselves within the fabric of the wind
lightless but swift a continual running
away from the angels which hunt

and hunt

if you are having a medical emergency please hang up and call 911

if you miss your false happy childhood, please smell the polaroids
if you smell the cigarettes, please thank your grandmother’s cuckoo clock
if you sing into the sky on a plank, please sing cheerfully
if you are cheerful just in breathing, please don’t hold your breath
if you hold your breath until you pass out, please speak to the angels
if you speak to the angels, please tell them sorry for me and for everyone else
if you beg for forgiveness and are blameless, please explode
if you explode, please do so with your eyes and heart burning open
if you burn to cinder, please sprinkle what is left into a september rain
if the rain doesn’t clean your hands, then pray to moloch
if you have to sacrifice your innocence to survive, please drink the ocean
if you drink the rushing salt, please gather all of the children’s tears
if you weep for yourself, please let us hear you sing when it is time
if it is time, please wash the ashes off your unconscious angels
if you are free, please take an ancient photograph
if your face appears in front of your old house, please speak as if alive
if you are alive, please hold the gold ghosts to your nose and inhale

 

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. He has two books forthcoming: Sapphires on the Graves from Glass Lyre Press and 500 Hidden Teeth from Meat For Tea Press. More of his work can be found @ ferrypoetry.com.