Crossing Over
 

You ever see those Ghost Whisperer TV shows?
If they were really speaking to spirits
would they need the jump cuts, the crackle-bang
soundtrack transitions and reverse-negative
video? And yet 12 years ago
a student brought a voice recorder into class
talked about the strange occurrences in his new home
and played a voice in the static demanding “Get out of here!”
More recently my friend swears he felt and saw
the smokey arms of his roommate’s dead brother
pinning him to the couch in the room where
the man took his own life. How should we take
such stories? What should we dread or hope for?
Relief at evidence of an afterlife? Fear
 wispy remnant of self might glide
room to room in the building where one dies,
an etherealism that can’t quite cogitate
but wants some inarticulatable aid
from the fleshbound? I thought when we died
the wanting would be mercifully over. On TV,
there’s always a medium who can interpret
the anxiety of the spirit. Someone who can talk
them into letting go. If only we had such sure guidance
bound in this flesh, living this day
to the next. If only it were so.