We are sat drinking
‘Old Speckled Hen’,
out of cooled tins
in the summer’s cold rain,

we talk of the last house,
a ghost we recalled,
when we each met
the ghost in the hall.

On that sprung branch,
she was lifted to my height

an easier examination,
I greeted my ghost,

I then figured her shape
with my touch, formed, real,

she offered me a scent
her sex, her appeal:

but my old man attentions
could scare her off –

my lightest of hauntings –
I must stay light myself.

Risen, our ghost,
on this landing,
her, embalmed,
our prior owner,
wishing to leave,
without asking,
M. reduced
by a buried composure,
slighted under
daylight’s exposure.

Our eldest child
met her in his room,
dark, spectred,
unexpected there:
he slumped back
to sleep’s deep rheum,
in doing so she slipped,
rent back to air:
our review made her
his dreamt-slept affair.

For CB & Flint

The briefest of expeditions –
gloam-reduced on unmarked
rough paths below Uckfield –
in frost’s shade – a steep
cut-back – a scuff of lost road
on our tugged walk along
the dip of a redundant drove

Sussex verges are now myths
of ribbons – tied-to mournings –
of days-limped bunched flowers –
of candles – air-pinched – below
roadside oaks – elms or beech –
there her young life leaked
after a deceleration – a kid
cut out by the steel saw and car

Our return home is assured
under our slow-stepped walk
on a lost-name route
on the lingering histories –
yet to be found – laid under tarmac –
only touched by the clod-split roots
of the oaks – elms or beech –
those tied-to fingerers of ghosts

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