Mexico Series, Pedestrians Only, Pastel, by John Cummings
Audio for Ghost begins at 2:04
GHOST
I watched you walk the fence line
that cut the yard in half:
the there-cow lowing from inside the mist,
the here-cow, clarity in the field.
I listened to your children breathe
while you sent phantom signals through the disc drive,
revving up. Whirring down.
(Like a pail too full for carrying,
you set your living down.)
On the pond the fog is fingers inches from the body,
the body cold and blue. In the morgue you were
a body. Nothing more.
The stray gets fat and watches from the curb.
There’s always more to do. I weed
the beds and dig the bulbs and squander
love on anything I can.
Coyotes gather dusk and throw it in a sack.
Howls overlap.
Fog lifts recognition from the field.
The animals watch it disappear.
____________________
Jane Ann Fuller
Review by Kristan LaVietes
In “Ghost,” the reader encounters an enigmatic facet of grief. While sadness is present, this poem concerns itself with something else happening within the speaker.
The poem’s rural, everyday setting is both mundane and vibrant—full of life that simply proceeds, just as the loved one who has passed did so like the plain putting down of a pail. An obvious aspect of grief is contending with loss, but here, we are contending more with exchange; one circumstance replaces another, cyclically. The loved one’s death is less an absence than a change of season.
This season of the ghost, significantly, is best discussed among the fields. Is the vast space empty, exposed? Or is it open, spacious? Life will go on, and what will it be like? Close fog hovers intimately and then fades, obscuring answers to these questions and others for the grieving. Is the loved one gone, or are they an apparition, alive in the remnants of reminders and memory, and even envisioned in the fog?
In grief, seemingly mutually exclusive truths coexist. Rising meter interweaves with falling meter here, deepening the enigmatic quality, and all is contained in the stanzas’ parallel composition and measured pace. The speaker is digging bulbs and weeding, anticipating the garden’s future, and “squandering love,” even as loss refuses to make sense in any one way. Heartbreak coexists with death’s reminder that it is part of life, and that life and death are at once routine and astonishing.
Punctuated by the lifting of the fog and by noting the animals as they watch it dissolve, the poem offers comfort in being one of them—a simple, living being, witnessing and holding, without judgment or a need for clarity. Whatever goes on inside the house, out here in the fields, fog breathes steadily in and out, and we, the still living, do, too. Our very participation in the cycle of seasons means we are connected to all who have also breathed, walked along the fences, lived, and died. We can hold on and let go at the same time. The fields, the cows, the gardens give us permission.
Review by Kathryn de Leon
The poem makes me think of one of my favorite poems, “The Moon and the Yew Tree” by Sylvia Plath, it has a similar dark and somber mood. Sylvia’s poem deals with the light and trees “of the mind,” this poem focuses on the body of the dead person as well as the bodies of animals (alive) in a field. Like a pail too full for carrying, you set your living down implies the person was a suicide. The deceased’s children are mentioned, so the speaker must be close to the family. The body cold and blue echoes Sylvia’s use of the word “blue” in her poem.