Ghost Walk

(from North Sea Drawings)

written by Tamar Yoseloff

 

A shooting star makes a sound like a scratch in vinyl, 

like the night is a record you can play. Some songs 

only make sense when they stutter on a note. 

The air is heavy and smells of violets. 

The sky is a graveyard of stars. 

My eyes hurt from too much looking. 

 

Once I saw the aurora from a dock in Norway. 

Men were going about their business, hauling 

great loads from one bay to another. 

The aurora was nothing to them, it had lost 

its wonder. It was green and strange, it swayed 

to an unheard tune. It must be what people see 

 

when they think they’re haunted, a light that moves 

like we do, but has no form. When people come back 

from near-death, they talk about a pulsing light 

at the end of a long hall. I practise my ghost walk,

for when I need to haunt; I am all soft edges, 

a silhouette caught on the horizon.