Bad Poetry: If Ghosts Can Haunt...(Post for 1.26.24)

This is the post that should have gone up Friday morning, 1.26.24. This web site's sponsors will get the posts for which they've paid, although it may take time. The prompt at Poets & Storytellers United was one you don't want to over-think: If ghosts can come back and haunt places or people in this world, and you became a ghost, where, what, or whom would you haunt?

It has to be taken whimsically. I don't believe people's ghosts really are condemned to haunt this world. I believe they are allowed to rest. I believe the sense of a beloved presence we feel, when we're in places we used to share with departed friends, generally comes from our memories, though spirit beings may in a few cases be able to use those memories to help or harm us. 

Christians are supposed to get our beliefs about the afterlife from the Bible. Christians have disagreed furiously about how to interpret the paradoxical teachings of the Bible. I don't really want to take sides in this kind of dispute. I really believe that this is one of the questions to which our mortal minds aren't able to receive the answer. Quarrelling about whether someone can be in Heaven while helplessly watching us suffer, now, or is sleeping until the Judgment Day, is like quarrelling about how all those little people fit inside the radio. Maybe those who have entered Eternity are able to look back into time--I wouldn't know, nor would you. 

I certainly want, after a good long active life with few if any changes in my daily schedule (such as my mother enjoyed), to be well prepared for what seems like a sudden death, then wake up in what seems like the next moment to be told "Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of the Lord." By which time the world we knew, and its time, have probably faded out of existence. I try to live in a way that leads toward that kind of end.

But, just to play with the popular myth of Halloween-type ghosts who scare people because they come to lead someone else out of the land of the living...This pleasant fancy goes out to my Bad Neighbor, who's fantasized about outliving me. Young people have a right to fantasize about outliving their elders, but people who fantasize about outliving people who are younger than they are, and healthier, deserve to imagine that they'd be haunted if they did.

If ghosts can haunt, then look for me

in willow, pawpaw, poplar tree

beneath whose roots cool water springs,

water of life to all good things.

Most of the time, you know that I

will watch the clouds float through the sky,

and revel in a thunderstorm

with no concern for mortal form,

enjoy the sights of ice and snow

(no danger from the cold I'd know),

watch little birdies build a nest

and flowers tilt, now east, now west.

And if you come to fill a jug

I'll blow a kiss, though I can't hug;

come with a friend to steal a kiss,

I'll look the other way from this;

come to the willow tree to mourn,

as lovers do, when feeling lorn,

I'll beam down wisdom of old age

in hopes the pain it may assuage.

But who brings poison out to spray

near any spring, had better pray

that God make him inspire pity

among strange men in a strange city.

I'll pop out in shape like a snake,

and then the form of bear I'll take,

and next a pile of rotting bones

that rise and walk, with creaks and groans,

A cold and slimy hand I'll stretch

forth, and his hand I'll firmly catch,

and spin him circling round and round

until his senses all confound,

and in his ears a roaring sound

and in his eyes a dazzling dark

and in his body nothing, stark,

tells whether he's on air or ground,

and so his body soon is found

in seven inches water drowned.

Then through the afterlife I'll flit

free as a bluebird, and I'll sit

upon a branch above his head

while judgment on his soul is read,

and blithely sing, to watch him yell

and squirm and sizzle down in Hell;

and then I'll flit back to the spring,

return to tree, and sit and sing

of how this world is better far

when dead and damned the sprayers are.

"Flow on," I'll sing, "artesian well!

The wonders of your Maker tell

to this world you were made to bless;

let none disturb, let none suppress.

Flow on, mysterious mountain springs!

Bear only health to living things."