Ghost Story Poem by Jan Sand

The biggest difference is the light.
The Moon now penetrates my flesh.
My bones are glass against the night,
My blood and veins glisten in a mesh
To delineate may frame.
My whole world is not the same.

I pass through walls as through a mist.
Trees and plants are my solidity.
I can touch them - they resist
And form the limit of my reality.
All else is vapor - people, animals and artifacts.
I am reduced to vegetable contacts.

Every moment my mind requests,
“Why am I here in ghostly guise,
What superbeing jests
With me in this state? But surmise
Gives no solution why I survive
Any more than those alive.

Specters are, I suspect, quite rare.
I thought I spotted someone last year.
I ran to see. No one was there.
I waited days for him to re-appear.
It is a lonely thing - to be a ghost,
To be kind of alive - almost.

I try to talk to people, children, beasts.
They retreat in fear - speed away.
Or else, in horror, cry out for priests.
So I sit alone at night, come what may.
I watch the Moon and stars, contemplate
This odd afterlife, watch fireflies, speculate.