Posthumous

I sometimes feel I am a ghost

walking inside the bones

of one who is long dead.

Shuffling through white supermarkets

only in body,

my spirit above me

on a higher plane,

or resting quietly

in some pristine glade

where children go to play

with dragonflies,

and lovers laugh,

their eyes tied.

But I am not Keats;

I face twenty-first century feats.

I shall not die

before I am twenty-six,

and there's no time

to live out in the sticks

when the world's encroaching

like a lion's maw

and every wave

of every shore

is pounding roundly at my door.

Yes, I sometimes feel

I am living a posthumous existence.

But there's no time for silence.

We must fight for peace and not accept death:

that's how to stop this endless violence.

                      ***

But maybe I am

      Han Shan

just looking for a doorway

              into the mountain,

or maybe I am Blake

       awaiting

              Heaven’s bubbling fountains.

More likely I’m me

         looking for a way

                into myself

          a way into the world,

                 a way into

         the heart of love,

   whose symbol

                 is a marble dove.