I’m using daily prompts associated with Inktober (artists doing ink drawings) to spur poetry this month. The poems flow from the prompts, though it may not be obvious (at all); and sometimes the poems are revisions of earlier poems that came to mind when I mulled the prompt. If there’s a photo in the post, it was chosen after the poem was written. I’m “showing my work” by offering some of the words, phrases, associations that came to me for each prompt. The poems may or may not have anything to do with gardens, gardening, or “nature” as it’s commonly considered. To see all the poems (once they’re written), check the Inktober landing page.

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Today’s prompt: GHOST

Some associations: Dickens’ Christmas Carol, white as a ghost, Casper the friendly ghost, give up the ghost, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, ghost of a chance, haunted house, spectre at the feast, ghost in the machine, look as though you’ve seen a ghost, to ghost on someone (indirectly reject them), a ghost of your former self, ghost town, ghost writer, ghost ship, phantom, shadow, specter, apparition, haunt, phantasm, poltergeist, ethereal, incorporeal

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Poem:

Brookgreen Gardens, 21 June 2014

I can’t seem to stop
taking their souls
when their souls take me.
A photo litany of the dead, I confess:
crabs, snakes, voles and moles,
birds, butterflies, turtles, deer, and dolphins,
fish, fishers, frogs, and iridescent blue beetles
all harrow my heart.
But the grave white horse,
undead,
is my haunting shadow.

©MMWms 2019

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