Hoodoo In The Garden Poem by Tara Teeling

You have no right to haunt me.

I didn’t ask for this,
the lingering soul of something
that died long before
the burial took place.
The flowers browned and
matted to the earth, before
the death knell had sounded.

Or, maybe I did,
because I’ve always been strangely
awed by ghosts;
always searching for them,
or speaking of them,
with whole-hearted, hot dedication.

They say you see things when
you are no longer looking,
and that may well be true,
because I see you everywhere,
though I am looking at other things:
on the other side of the bed,
or in the thick of lilies in the garden,
where the cabbage butterflies play.

I know that I am being touched,
without seeing the fingers
make their association.
This feeling is certain, with
no room for other notions.
It is a strange mix of burn and calm
which leaves me flummoxed,
wondering where time is standing,
or if it ever was.

The afterglow from lying on the
grave of a long-dead loved one,
evokes strange comfort, as well as
a lingering disquiet.

Regret and acceptance are the feuding sisters,
tangling with each other, vying for dominance,
blooming together, like barbed roses
wrapping slowly round the headstone.

You were dead,
and I‘d been freed,
yet somehow, I am the one
who has stopped breathing.