Haunted by the Here

You all go right ahead and be spooked
By what’s just beyond the sensory.
We find this past that’s present eerie

And suspect it’s what spooks you as well,
The hereness of the transitory,
The transitory including you.

You could end up as a news item,
One line about an odd homicide,
A stray bullet, a strange accident.

More likely, you won’t be news at all
Except to your family, your friends,
Maybe coworkers, a neighborhood.

And that’s everything nothing for you.
Will you come haunt us after that? No?
And yet here’s a memory of you,

A small child we met once in a poem,
A real child, a real poem, insofar
As anything is or isn’t real—

(Insert memory of yourself here,
Or a memory of your own child.
You’re in here now. Doesn’t it spook you?)