MEETING

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.