A true ghost story from the poet’s life.

*****

Recorded Reading (4:38): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ogitx5o3tpfxhfybb87qq/Bringing-the-Comfort-Through.mp3?rlkey=eoi93jefhfqbtq3zi0p1g45x9&st=qv0comvv&dl=0

*****

Bringing the Comfort Through

I was but a teenager —
A clueless teenager, at that —
My boyfriend a jazz drummer was
He was a real hep cat

Who didn’t fit in very well
With his fur’ious family
Who, in return, found they did not
Approve so very much of me

Because in such an artsy way
I stuck out from the crowd
Their rules said overnight to stay
I was not allowed

But off they went one summer day
For about a week
And he and I about it were
Too happy to speak

Seven days in which we might
Enjoy each others’ company
Without forever looking where
Our next restriction be

One afternoon he held a “jam”
To which came many a good friend,
When they were tired of playing
Didn’t want the night to end

So I cooked them dinner
We all had a glass of wine
Deciding that the afternoon
And evening had been fine!

And it was late when we lay down
Together, unaccustomedly ~
It seemed that I behind my
Overtired eyelids see

Gauzy ghostly curtains
Waving some near window from;
It seemed to me that suddenly
The night sorrowful had become

A headache blossomed at the base
Of my skull where it met the neck
The kind of pain that any prospect
Pleasure of completely wreck

And in my inner ear
Via some ghostly sonic stream
I could have sworn I heard
A deeply grieving woman’s scream

At that age, kept my virgin mind
As pure as effort could it make ~
I would not medicine so much
As e’en an aspirin take

So did my conscientious
Very best to lie back down,
Soothe from my mind those curtains,
Smooth from my face that frown

When suddenly my torso
Popped straight up those cushions from,
My hands up to my aching eyes,
For convinced I had become

Of a course of action
No logic had writ down:
I told him that if I might
Only don an airy gown

With flounces at the neck and hem,
Open the upstairs sliding door
And lay with my head to it, then
I wouldn’t suffer any more…

That’s when his upper body
Rose, as mine had, from the bed,
With both his hands, the same as mine,
Wrapped around his head

Another couple minutes
He sat there silently
Before he slowly turned a newly
Wond’ring gaze to me

Said he, “I had forgot the date
But four years gone this very day
My own suffering mother
Next to that same window lay

Wearing her housedress with its flounce
At neck, and too, at heel,
Trying from her headache
Some sweet how to better feel

Ambulance next morning
And it took her away
Then she fatally hemorrhaged
Within another day

That evening was the last I saw
My wonderful dear mother of,
And every single day since then
I’ve thought of her with love

But you — you had no way to know
Whether she dead or living be
How could you so confident
Her final moments see?”

I answered, it had been a gift
A loving mother from
To let him know ’twere not so far
Away from him, where she had come

And that she hovers caringly,
And that she watches still,
That with her loving pray’rs and
Her entire angelic will

She seeks to smooth the pathway
Her beloved young man of
To whom she’d not been able
To communicate her love

At that most crucial moment
Would have extended comfort to
The one of all family brought
Lowest by her death unto

And seeing my proximity
To that one, in the cosmic dance,
Had seized this opportunity,
Our unusual chance

To set up resonance in true
Tantric intimacy
By which she might, at last, to him,
Bring that comfort through, by me

*****

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