Superior Haunting

This poem is a love song to my sister. 

She and my brother and I recently went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, along Lake Superior, for a scattering of my parent’s ashes.

When people live far away, it’s easy to slide into a habit of benign neglect.  To fail to call.  To fail to visit.  We hurt people by our inaction, as well as our actions. 

Let us remember to show those we love, that we love them.  And never forget, even in these days of COVID isolation, that there is nothing like being with each other.

Sending out love to all my family and friends!!

Thanks for coming by to read.

In the blue buzz of the neon bar

I admire the half of me, you are,

And watch my faults reflecting back,

My exact, intrepid, better half.

We sip sour, in the glowing gloom,

And watch the moon at the end of the room.

Through the plate glass, in the liquid night,

Superior haunting, by candlelight.

And our moments, brief, at each other’s side

Are enough, to let our memories slide

To the shingled house, with the crumbling flue.

With a growing me, and a growing you.

You sat in a basket, cute as a pin–

One we usually put our laundry in–

And I crawled, at four, all across the floor–

For I never, not ever, the dust abhorred.

And I leaned back, in our shingled shack,

And fell to Earth, a sloppy stack

Of rules and wishes, whimpering,

And you rolled, in your high chair, giggling,

And pointing.  And I added that thump

To join my collection of hardened lumps.

Today, on the shore, meters high from the waves,

As the current came crashing, to fill up the caves–

With water, ice cold–dyed a palette of browns,

And we soared above shipwrecks, not making a sound,

And we scrambled on granite, left back, by the ice,

And the glacier’s small change littered beaches, like dice,

And we wandered the forest, well back in the wood,

And we scattered the ashes, the best, that we could,

Meaning well.  Meaning much.   Always missing their touch,

A light hand on our shoulder, a gasp, puff of ash.

How lonely, without them.  How dear, to be near you.

How clear, that this past meeting

Won’t be our last.

Copyright 2021 Andrea LeDew

For two ghost stories in verse, read The Kiss and  The Other Side.   For a foreboding tale of August storms, read Good Fortune.