Are You a Pink Cloud Now?

Another one from spring of 2004.


I don’t believe in ghosts but I believe
you haunt me – not very grandmotherly
of you, but you were more inclined to fix
a frozen pizza than a latticework pie,
and we both scoffed at the biddies wearing
tight blue curls and shopping for big, modest
panties. Tell me – I’ve always wondered – how
do they decide which clothes your ghost will wear?

Do you iron silk blouses and fix your hair?
When you visit Pop-Pop, are you twenty,
just months before your wedding, or would he
not recognize his bride on the cusp
of the second half of the century?

But maybe you haven’t kept that body,
and that’s why I’ve heard you scolding me,
smelled your cigarette smoke in the hot night air,
felt you, a spicy warmth below my heart –
the place I’ve always thought of as my soul –
but I haven’t seen and can’t recall your eyes.