Talking with my mother in an empty house
4
the room is alive with light
a halo of sunny sainthood
gilding old furniture
rich gold sunlight
sparkling with dancing dust
enhances silk flowers
polished scarlet tongues of fire
call for your presence
yet you are absent now
I am the one who dusts them
and adds to their gloss
do they still throb vibrant
in the early morning light?
indeed they do
dust rises from your poinsettias
and dust angels dance in the sun
how many to each leaf?
I bend my head to look
and sense dry leaves brushing
rough lips against my face
rogermoorepoet 
Rising dust means a disturbance of some kind in the room. The movements of the poet or of someone else.
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I was thinking of the fine grains that arise when you polish the silk leaves … but there are other presences …
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I think we should have a ghost story workshop at Fictional Friends!
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Not a bad idea … I am not sure how to workshop ghost stories though …
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A discussion (with reading examples) of how to handle disbelief, suspense, focus on other senses and metaphor. The metaphorical work of the ghost as guilt, regret, change, etc. Writing from different points of view. Religious and spiritual over and undertones. Ghosts in literature. Just thinking ‘aloud’!
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That would certainly work, Jane. The willing suspension of disbelief is sometimes quite unwilling!
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strong words! beautiful!
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Thank you. I wrote them some time ago and have just re-discovered the file. So glad you like them.
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Melancholic and yet haunting beautiful words.
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Thank you. I re-read the words and I am back there, thirty years ago, in that room.
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Haunting and bittersweet. It’s amazing what little things bring loved ones who have moved on back to our presence.
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I think Partly that it’s sitting here in an empty house … different house, but same sense of loneliness and bitter-sweetness. I am amazed at how the sequence has come together. I still don’t know if it’s poetry, though. So unlike what I usually write. I am so glad you like it. We’ll see how it develops.
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Well, it’s poetry in my mind, whatever that is worth. “Come home, Clare!”😊
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Thanks, Tanya. I have so many ideas, sitting at home with so much creative thinking time on my hands. I am really digging deep. Now I need the time to turn creative thought into word and deed. It will happen. The only person, if indeed she is a person, saying “Come home, Clare” louder and more often than you is Poor Princess Squiffy. Thanks for being here with me.
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Princess Squiffy and I, kindred souls…Lol😊
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You are both incorrigible. I am slowly getting used to her!
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Lol…yep!
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