My Old Flame

My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -

Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes 
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.

Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.

A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!

No one saw your ghostly 
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.

Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.

Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!

Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,

we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road. 

Lowell Robert (1964). “My Old Flame” (p. 5). For the Union Dead. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY.

In my travels I spent time with a great yogi.
Once he said to me.

“Become so still you hear the blood flowing
through your veins.”

One night as I sat in quiet,
I seemed on the verge of entering a world inside so vast
I know it is the source of
all of
us.

I would be married, but I’d have no wife,
I would be married to a single life.

The slamming door,
The picture falls,
The empty seat,
The ripples on a pool.
The shiver of passing cool,
A little movement in the corner of the eye,
They are out there when they die.

The missing keys,
The car lights on,
The Sunday paper when it's gone,
My favorite screwdriver disappeared,
Hammer and chisel lost I know its wierd,
Even in fading light,  
I can tell they have been passing here at night.

In the the sitting room too,
My  alcohol is being consumed,
A rowdy bunch without a doubt,
I guess they have been all about.
And then the bathroom loo
My aftershave is gone too
Can't be true
Isn't it true Ghosts don't shave ?

They have no lengthening whiskers,
No 6 o'clock shadow just a shade.
Even if they waxed their legs
For some spiritual tango on their pegs
They wouldn't use an aftershave glaze
Just some moonlight shadow mixed with cloudy greys.

In the late night when I cannot sleep,
I walk the house in bare feet,
And wonder when my boys became men,
Looking as the soundly sleep,
Its Saturday night they clearly reek,
Of Bourbon, aftershave and feet.
No wonder the Ghosts they leave them alone,
Is it just me they want to atone?