Too scary to be beautiful?–powder-blue sometimes,
ashen the ghosts now. Always one
obsessed with the cartography
of Indiana. Fade they do into the stacks
when I approach, will not be spoken
to. Why do they return? All this
silent research, maps, verse.
Someone (me?) to search for something? Bones?
Jewelry? Lost words? A mouse runs across
the carpeting. We at least share a brotherhood
of breath, saliva and blood. (Its scared
black pinheads of eyes.) But the ghosts
go on reading, loveless, silent, alone
even in the company of what they desire.