A Picnic with Ghosts

It is a broken place.
Old pier poles, just a few of them, dug deep,
stubs now, little more.
Dry and grey in the sun, cracks along the sides.
What was once there, the fishing pier,
long gone, washed away by storms and neglect,

Boats no longer come here.
It was probably always a problematic harbor,
a slave to tides, craft only able to enter
and leave in a tight window of time,
and now, with no worthy place to tie up,
they have found easier places to berth,
to load and unload.

You come here there. There is something that calls you.
Silence perhaps. A lost history. Ghosts
with no one to haunt. It all feels too familiar,
the lost places like this one,
You carry your own ghosts
and find them, after all these years,
for better company than you might have imagined

So, coming here, to this forgotten spot
with its random remains.
is a bit of a picnic, a bit of a holiday
from the noise of a world too ready
to let it all go just because of a little difficulty,
leaving all too often mere remains
and ghosts with stories
never heard.

About this poem.

The picture was taken at the end of Provincetown. MA, at the edge of the salt marshes. You can’t see it from the road. Me? I like the spot. I am good with other people’s ghosts. They leave me more curious than haunted.

Tom