Ghosts Of Our Memories

Ghosts Of Our Memories
© Surazeus
2016 08 27

While reading a book in afternoon light
I feel them walking from shadows of doors,
lost souls with long gold hair like willow leaves
who giggle and throw flowers in my hair.

I laugh and turn to pinch their freckled arms
but they all vanish when I wake alone
as sun flickers out behind distant hills
and words in books transform to butterflies.

Now I understand why people who lived
long before I was born came to believe
people who died lingered here after death,
haunting us as ghosts of our memories.

My brain generates ghosts of ones I love
and makes them dance like puppets on the stage
of my imagination, glowing ghosts
who vanish when I wake to the real world.

Their ghosts are nothing more than flash of light
on shimmering mountain lake where I stand
staring in mirror of infinity
where everyone who ever lived is not.

When conscious glow of my self-aware soul
flashes at death, and energy of light
that sustains me returns to blazing sun,
I will vanish to nothing more than dust.

Ghost of my body may linger some time
in brains of those who saw me with their eyes,
image of my face reflected on water,
but even that will vanish when they die.

My fingers dance on keys to type these words
that show I was here on this spinning world
like footprints in mud hardened by sun heat
that remain long after death snuffs my soul.

Whoever you are, awake in sunlight,
a hundred or a thousand years from now,
feeling light of my soul beam from these words,
sing your own words, surrounded by your friends.

While reading a book in afternoon light
you feel us walking from shadows of doors,
lost souls with long gold hair like willow leaves
who giggle and throw flowers in your hair.