Poetry Month Day 25 - I’ve Been Riding With the Ghost

(UPDATE 4/6/10: This poem was revised for the Top 50 poems of April contest, presented by Poetic Asides and Writers Digest). Like most drafts, the original is somewhere safe but out of sight.) 

    I’ve Been Riding With the Ghost


Maybe Berryman was happy there, as his poems
suggest he’d sit under this tree Ohio keeps alive
opens its mouth to fall air and exhales orange leaves.
Maybe I was happy there too once. Some nights
it looked as though I walked alone and talked
of fire burning up an old friend’s arm or chassis
rusted through to windshields kids busted for kicks
in the swamps behind my house. While colts
and mares gallop royally through those Ohio fields
I laid in bed and let the louder ghosts of Kenyon
College stroke my hair asleep. Before my first real
northern winter came, I sat on a thunder-gutted stump
and was glad. As someone who is gone from there,
I recollect the good. As someone who is not a ghost,
I don’t haunt. Am haunted. Spent years searching
for that book of poems James Wright hid inside
a crevice of stone to let me know he really wrote
those lines for me. Never found it. Never heard him
sing except a VHS the library gave out. His fingers
fought the hemlines of a too-small sport coat
as smoke strangled his tongue. In my time there
a lovely drunk girl thought me decent, wound up
in my bed. I held her, but she wouldn’t hold me back.
As someone who is not a ghost, I know that ghosts
are loved. Now nothing holds me back from telling
anyone who wants to hear that the ghosts of Kenyon
sing their best in springtime, sound less exhausted.
What now can I sing about? failing out? Sunset glows
too far away. I rode with ghosts, ghosts led me astray.

***

For today's prompt, write a poem inspired by a song. Be sure to include the song and artist (if known) with your poem, so that we can all make our own mix CDs to write poetry.  And so I've tabbed five from a quick scan of my iTunes.

Shortlist for PAD # 25:
Jason Molina -- I've Been Riding With the Ghost
Nirvana -- All Apologies
John Hartford -- First Girl I Loved
Iris DeMent --Our Town
Eddie Hinton -- Dreamer