Playing with Ghosts

Kunitz, the poet I recalled in the last posting, typically ends strong: "Touch me. remind me who I am."

I don't know a great deal about Stanley Kunitz .... I seem to recall that he and his artist wife lived on Cape Cod and that he had a connection to Columbia University and was poet laureate, quite late in life, and had some connection to the National US Archives, before the USA had a poet laureate. He's one of my ghosts.

Woke up, this AM, with other more personal ghosts .... friendly ghosts ... like Casper, the mischievous little fellow of 50's (or was it 60's) television. Many of the visitors to my office suffer visitations from ghosts they wish they could lose ... preferably in some dark alley. Their memories sometimes even intrude on the latter day versions of these visitors to their minds. Disillusionments with and resentments towards family members who are either dead, changed or no-longer-necessary, as they once may have been.

My ghosts are, as I said, mostly friendly ghosts.  Some are live ghosts ... by that, I mean nothing more than the traces of folks still in our lives who were once so different. Children who are grown. Spouses who have "grown up," as well, and joined the revelries of Last Quarter Play .... How did that happen?! Even grandchildren leave traces, as they grow and morph into new forms. Little "TRANSFORMERS," that they are.

But many of the ghosts of later years no longer have a presence beyond in our minds and hearts. This morning, it was an ex-Marine named Sukkie who in later life became friendly -- he and his wife, Diane -- with my parents. I was half asleep when Sukkie appeared ... followed by Maurice the Liturgical Singer and his wife Minnie. They had a son, roughly my age, and a younger daughter and a cognitively challenged brother (Minnie's Brother) named Maxie who would recite nonsense poems. 

These images began a veritable parade of images ... Parents .... In-Laws .... Grandparents, I had three that I knew ... a plumber on W. 5th Street and Old Man Engler who disliked kids noisily playing on our street. Neighbors in Toledo and Providence. My neighbor who lived next door when we moved into our present home ... Sam ... who lived there with his wife and his daughter and her family and his son.

I know where many of these people were buried ... and all these images go with me.

A living visitor is coming up the office path. I hear her feet. It's time to put the writing down, for the moment.