Invitation to the Wild Ghost

in memory of Peter Wild

Be thankful that you are not among us
as the tobacco-squirting Harley you with tattoos,
the 1960 badass apparition riding free.

Be glad you're not the uniformed Catholic school you,
fidgeting for recess; the specter of a wagon boy
with a 1951 dinged-up brick of a radio.

Be grateful, because you could have been stuck
as the pipe-smoker, trying too hard, haunting us for eternity
in your poorly-fit 1982 sportcoat.

And though you hoped to stalk these halls
scampering around on your 2009 curmudgeonly cane,
I'm afraid you have been healed.
********************************From here on out, it's 1970,
and you will forever eat luminescent cottage cheese,
sitting reading villanelles in your first real office.