The Dead Are Never Really Dead

The late night party continues in my tired head

By Chameleons Eye on iStock (image licensed by author)

I hear the patter of ghosts talking
in my head late into the night.
They gather after midnight…
family, friends, enemies, those
I loved and those I wish I couldn’t
remember, a party of lost souls
who call my addled brain home.

The laugh of my friend Scottie,
who died young, now forever thirty-two.
Die soon old man he says, come skiing
with me again in mountains of pure snow.

My father, quiet, but there at the table,
still a man of the shadows thirty years after
his death… you never knew he me he whispers,
you never knew me when I wasn’t lost.

My mother sends words of guilt,
you should have come to dinner more,
as she passes plates of my favorite cookies
to the eternal party of the dead, departed
and long gone. Everyone gets a treat
except my dad… she still hates
him eighty years after the divorce,
I think there are even shoe prints
on his back, mom has been dancing
on his soul again.