Floating, First and Last

How many people have you

Floated through who are no more?

How many people will you

Float through? What’s meant by you?

You imagine someone home,

Reading beside a warm fire,

The way you always wanted

To be sitting and reading,

And look! That name on the book,

That old-fashioned, paper book,

Is yours! You’re moving through them,

Your phrasing, your borrowed thoughts,

A long braid connecting them

To much, much earlier ghosts.