Ghost Hunting

By C.F. Helms - Salt Lake City, Utah, USA - 25 November 2015

 

For Carson Illum

 

 

1. The Beehouse

The night he died, I dreamed my uncle rose

from bed and walked out into open fields

where he put honeycomb on tongues of children

come to lead him home again, far away

from tubes and needles, noxious medications.

 

Awake, I have no words to mourn him

worthy of his loss. Instead, I walk his barren

farm, search its vacant buildings in the

hope he'll reappear, restore me to the

sound of crickets singing to the moon.

 

But the only ghost that haunts this place
is the smell of smoke and honey in his
abandoned beehouse. When I was young
the scent was thick, hypnotic, magical
as Christmas. The stale trace that lingers
in the air works like a subtle drug,
transforming memory to visionary presence.

 

 

2. The Shop

In the shop, his life is neatly packed
in boxes, tiny coffins filled with letters,
pictures from the war: young faces lit
with smiles that barely hide what troubled
eyes cannot. He never told me what it’s
like to watch a comrade die, or how it
feels to take the life of someone’s husband,
father, son or brother. Some things are better
left unopened, hidden safe from sight.
So these cartons remain undisturbed,
some containing family secrets buried
in selective, group amnesia.

 

 

3. The Lake

At the west end of the farm, the lake is veiled
in weeds, its solitude defended by neglect.
Five years old, I fell into its glassy blackness.
Frozen breathless, I saw death in my reflection:
a pallid, childish face, eyes agape with fright.
My uncle fished me out after I sank into a dream
where I was cradled in a woman’s arms,
sleeping on her breast, contented.

 

I staggered through his door, a puddle rising at my feet.
He stirred the burning coals as I sat near the fire
wrapped in heavy blankets. Heat enveloped me
as slumber took me from this world, returned me
to my dreams, where, to this day, the woman calls me
to herself, this lake, to endings and beginnings
unseen in my reflection, deep beneath water’s surface.