Longing
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
If I believed in ghosts, your ghost would be
The one I want to haunt me long and long and long.
Your specter would be stretched out. I would see
It. Only I could hear its grayed out song,
But no one else can matter, can they? You
(Well, you in half light whiteness floating in
My bedroom, whiteness fringed with drowning blue)
Would levitate just long enough to pin
Me through the chest, a stabbed through mortal moth
In your collection underneath the glass
Called memory, your collection box, the froth
Of death around my mouth. You then would pass.
Your ghost would pass the petrified wood piece
Against the window. You will never cease.
~ Phillip Whidden