Berry Hollow

As a flame blown about by the wind goes out and no one knows where, so the saint released from body and name vanishes, no one knows where . . .     

Buddhist scripture

                                                   in memory, Richard Spector, 1948-2007

There are ghosts.
The civil war goes on.
Here, in the mountains, south,
it is not warm.

These rocks are millions of years old—
as long as the rocks remain
we will be restless.

The mountains are phantoms hiding in
trees and air, they are soft animals
sleeping and their sleep is just.

What's to eat? The berries are gone.
In the musty cabin, who leans over us
while we sleep? The snakes are gone.
Time drones on, loading and unloading its charge,
the tongue picked clean: not this, not this

Herbert Hoover's bathtub behind the house
is full of empty bottles. Where will Herbert
Hoover bathe—at his retreat
on Graves' Mountain?

The print of cloven hooves in the meadow—
they scratched the dirt, ripped up the grass,
gleaned rotten apples from off the ground, there
at Clark's where deer have been.

Apple trees collapse even as they live,
so old and brittle, branches snapped in the wind,
dead limbs weather on the tree like barn siding—
it is as if the whole earth is rusting here.

There will be ghosts as long as there is air.

Anne Becker