For years your ghost has been watching,
Making notes, measuring your footprints,
Interviewing your cats (who've mostly lied)
Now, she's decided the moment has come
To talk to you. Some things she finds
Difficult to reproduce: the changed angle
Of your tilted head when feigned interest
Suddenly turns real; the sound of the double m
When you say the word "commemorate;"
A sort of clawed gesture as you pull a thought,
Unwilling and bitter, into the light.
Her people contact your people; arrangements
Are made, unmade, remade. You're there
Ten minutes early -- your grandfather would approve.
Your ghost, though, has had to deal with
Some spectral emergency and gets there
Thirty years later, with a cake.