perquam velim scire, esse phantasmata

To Shelter Itself and, Sheltered, to Conceal Itself:

What looks the ghosts have thirsted for, what love

                                                                               they conceal

            in their deep pails carried up the stairs

and emptied into the fire,

                                       themselves air poured into fire,

            far from what they do not know

                                                            they expect: to be

returned to time,

                           this time. To be allowed to make a real

            point. To take staff in hand

                                                      and draw the line

that parts the water that drives the path that delivers the promise:

                                                                                                      to land

            a plot-shaped spot to seat myself and my other things above

all else, and to end—

                                (the life where the man who was

            our father throws the woman who was our mother

over the fence and dumps her there where she drifts unconscious

            in time and we stand, dispossessed, outside our own

house,

            where the sprinklers, the wet green yard, hold the rear window,

            hold so the light sets alight what little a little eye

                                                                                        apprehends)

Gina Franco.

PS - I was thinking about a title referencing Scrooge (Marley and his fellow wandering spirits seeking to interfere in human affairs), but opted for sticking to my current Latinate theme with another little bad joke from Pliny (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, again).