when the black pebbles
crept into the crevices
of my shoes
and pulled me deeper into
the earth
I felt connected -
like I feel with you;
i wanted to pick the flowers
and give them to you
but they’d never make it back
across the sea
of anxiety I skid across
until my arms are wrapped around you
and I know you’re mine.

There I sunk
into the sand, out of luck,
dreaming of love,
sick with it to the bone-
infected, **** it-
and thinking of you,
I stopped and listened to the sound
of glassy waves shattering cold
against shifting mossy rockfaces.
I thought of the way
you make my blood rush
like the windblown waves;
how my heart
is full of the changing colours of our souls
like the water transforms
deep to shallow,
light to dark to light again... until the cool silence arrives,
sweet music
of a babbling beachfront
historic bedrock
and
the wreck of the edmund
fitzgerald
hidden beneath
in shallow graves;
ten thousand souls
over a century,
I can hear them all
telling me
“this is the place. this is right.”
where I wanna be
she may be
and I could be wrong
but
my heart steers me
and I can’t stop smiling
so
here I root
to begin my new life
at the
edge of the world.

He sings the ghosts,
Gives them voice,
Their memories,
Living in song and verse,
Their pain,
Their joy,
Their life now gone,
Each moments,
Sang but unsung,
Spoken but left silent,
Like a wind,
Blowing,
Forming,
A wind through hearts and souls,
Not felt with skin but hearts,
Each whisper,
Raised in song,
Beyond the words,
Beyond the notes,
Rising,
Living,
Heard yet silent,
Voices long lost,
Quieted,
Silenced,
But he hears,
He sings,
And we feel the wind,
The silent stories,
The lives unknown,
Past but not so lost,
Bells more felt than heard,
Ringing in our souls,
In harmony,
In melody,
In dissonance,
Woven in music,
Unheard with heard,
Unsung with sung,
Unknown with known,
A whisper in the soul,
The bells,
Ringing in the wind,
The wind called forth,
Ghost wind,
Long lost,
But never forgotten,
He sings the ghosts.

~He Sings the Ghosts, an ode to Gordon Lightfoot by Bethany Davis, April 3, 2016