Last week I slept in an old B&B,
Victorian, Midwestern, built to convey
High respectability: a house for
A father of its foursquare, limestone town.
Now it wears a bohemian skrim,
Offering brownies and soy granola.
There is said to be a ghost. I don’t know
What kind. Scuttling waif in long nightdress?
Guilt-wracked hypocritical reverend?
As I lay in the high, four-poster bed
Marking midnight on the digital clock,
Watching LEDs blink from my cell phone,
The laptop, and the TV’s complex box,
To the sound of cars and central A/C,
I compared this ghost to an endangered bird,
Her nesting woods cut to shreds by strip malls,
Office parks, and the Interstate, cheeping
Forlornly for a mate. In the sober
Morning light, the lacy lampshade over
The candle-shaped 40-watt GE bulb
Began to rock inexplicably.
I thought: Have you now been reduced to this?
In your own house? Is this what “haunting” means
For you? Trying to catch a stranger’s eye
For an instant as he starts his cluttered day,
Just to say that once you were living too?