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Ghostwriting the Winter, by Royal Rhodes

11/23/2023

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Picture
Pines in the Snow, by Maruyama Ōkyo (Japan) before 1795

Ghostwriting the Winter

scanning the dark pines
helps me forget just for once
I am getting old

if I had a voice
I would echo crows to shake
branches off the trees

how the winter sun
freezes on the path ahead
shadows of a ghost

the frosting of ice
becomes a polished mirror
flowering snowflakes

my blood on the ice
marked the place where I toppled
youngsters slide laughing

lonesome butterflies
visit the poet Basho
what do they tell him

my remembered loves
like wings torn from butterflies
for a memento

one caterpillar
wove a cocoon and vanished
a textbook on life

I think like a child
but more than seventy now
the moon almost full

tracking that full moon
seems an old tragedy played
without any masks

watching the moon change
until a cloud flotilla
gives me needed rest

as snow falls on snow
my dreams pile up on past dreams
sleepless more and more

Royal Rhodes

Royal Rhodes taught global religions for almost forty years at Kenyon College. His poems have appeared in multiple literary journals, including: The Ekphrastic Review, The Chained Muse, Autumn Sky Poetry, The Lyric, and elsewhere.
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