Come Away, Come Away, Come Away Home

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The wraiths belong to staircase places, trapped,

Cannot tread up or down.  Wraiths’ steps are lost.

The stairs are lost.  No ghostly paths are mapped.

A something like true nothingness is mossed

On long-dead feet because they cannot move.

Wraiths have not moved away from stairwells where

Ghosts live in haunt and death.  Wraith breathings prove

That they are deathless.  Ghosts would let breath snare

Us by exhaling it to float across

To unsuspecting nostril to infect

Our unsuspecting hearts and lungs so moss

Can, preternatural, grow.  We don’t suspect.

  Your home is theirs but they await your breath

    To warm them till they hug you in the breeze of death.

©  Phillip Whidden