I am become my grandfather's ghost:

Crumbs over the kitchen sink into eternity

The children of hunger,

The Daughters Insomniac,

Nobody ever loved you like a good pot of stew.

 

My grandfather wore a messenger

Hat, a black leather jacket.

He is alive now, like a ghost;

I, his cool fibers drifting

Fridgewards-- an infinity

In this yellow mist of morning:

The orange steam rising against the blue of the tide.

​

The last time I saw my grandfather

(Twenty minutes from forever)

Fingers screaming into function

And how soft everything bends!

And the creeping under the certainty

That I would not see him again.

 

And so I am become my grandfather's ghost,

Feet scraping space two inches above the floor:

A family of pear trees

And cow-skin boots,

An infantry fusil in the orchard into eternity.

 

The communist revolution ate away his smile

To the core, plucked it ripe

So much civilian-hanging fruit.

And to see me! A compass

Pointed east: red spirograph/

The orange steam rising against the blue of the tide.

 

But I will become my grandfather's ghost;

Pork fat and cherry trees,

Yellow polaroid summer

My daughters the daughters of hunger and insomnia,

But also grass yard, garden, and pear-skin stolen sun--

 

The hunger of the soldiers belly

Gnawing at beauty/a paring knife

In the Day Amber flesh of the world:

Calloused hands working the fruit

From the rind into eternity.