Flame Poem by Bill Upton

It was not just a voice,
It was a ghost.
It never spoke out loud,
But hovered silently in a subconscious state.
It was the extraordinary visitor
That would not leave.
It did not come when called,
And it did not revisit the 'crime scene',
Somehow eluding eviction
Year after year,
Decade after decade,
Nearly a lifetime.
There was no hacking device available
To break into the circuitry.
The bomb squads were unable to dismantle the device,
And the encryption could not be cracked.
It was there,
And it was meant to be there.
The other night the phone rang.
It was not just a voice...
It was the ghost.