This is an edited version of the poem that first appeared in Fountain of Youth (Vine Leaves Press, 2016), p: 85–86.
The dead don’t knock on doors.
They slide through windows
to watch football with old friends.
When we are gathered
around the television set,
reclining on couches, or lying on carpets,
resting bowls of nachos or carrots
on stomachs or laps,
we will feel, on occasion,
the atmosphere changing color, thickening,
the barely perceptible moisture
of the dead is— perhaps — the only evidence
of their presence.
As though a process of cosmic osmosis
happens in heartbeats, in quick electric
shivers and excitement trickling
from vein to vein when a teammate
reclaims possession or leaps into the air
to attempt a volley. It is there
that they come alive again,
not while watching the game
in the living room, but in knocking
the ball from player to player,
and scoring goals we only talk about
the following morning
in classrooms and cubicles.
Our cheers and univocal groans
disappear into dimensions made
not to accommodate the rest of our human baggage
and there they evolve into stars,
not exploding balls of gas,
but a sputtering of souls
from friends our visitors miss and fear
forgetting in the dark.
