THE EVIDENCE OF GHOSTS

I was four years big
and I thought the world was in chorus
just for me.
~My father told me
and I believed.

It was on one of those apple-green days
that my Daddy bent and kissed me on the cheek
and took a sharp left
right out of New Jersey
and headed west for my Auntie's house
to the vanishing land called 'o-high-o'
though I did not calculate her
in the sudden and absolute
hush of the world.

Twenty years after or so
when I was about a century old,
immersed in my Raphael-visions
freezing the world with my paints and my ink,
and rescuing everyone else to feel safe;
Mama once said,
(more than less a hundred times)
'when your heart is thick in the handshake
of Love, you may think
this one's the razor-red truest
but men come and go
and love may escape your heart.'

'It is your children alone
that become the legends of your life;
Though they may tip your world high and low,
they will never
escape the circle of your heart.
It is men that come and go.'

My mother told me
and I believed.
But Daddy, it was you
who showed the way.