We Are Stardust

My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Writing Prompt #165 “Collage 26”

Life is full of shaggy dog stories,

Like the ones told by drifters

As you walk along the railway track

Or the yarn the baby-sitter

Spun about a haunted shack.

That summer in the lonely garden

With the ocean’s breathy chill,

You were visited by a memory,

One that haunts you still.

You’d just passed your driving test

And your father loaned you his car

To drive to an open-air rock gig,

It wasn’t very far.

You turned up the radio,

To your favourite rock and roll song,

When from the back seat you noticed

Someone else singing along.

You pulled over

On the hard shoulder,

Stones flying,

Cars honking,

Looked in the rear-view mirror,

Into the misty eyes

Of a hitch-hiking hippy ghost,

Travelling from coast to coast,

City to city,

For eternity.

Your hands shook so hard,

You couldn’t really feel

When the ghost asked you to move over

And took the steering wheel.

It didn’t have a licence,

Hadn’t passed a test,

But in this kind of situation,

A ghost knows what is best

When it’s driving a meat coated

Skeleton made from stardust:

What did you have to be afraid of?

 

© Kim M. Russell, 2016