This is the Time of Ghosts

Through lingering shadows of the past,
times of struggle, revolution and dissent,
they anchor themselves deep and fast
to an increasingly unsettled present.

Helplessly, they wait in public places,
hotels, malls, and libraries where,
helpfully, a librarian ghost traces
haiku as he escorts you to a chair.

Eerily, they haunt crannies and nooks,
entering museums and classrooms,
easing themselves into pages of books,
etching words on churchyard tombs.

Egregiously, they are free to wander,
earlier obligations do not cease with death;
every ghost is condemned to ponder
each sin and broken promise after their last breath.

Kim M. Russell, 29th May 2025

Image by Nina Boshoven on Unsplash

This week at the dVerse Poets Pub we are meeting the bar with Grace and the Trolaan, a poetic form created by Valerie Peterson Brown.

The Trolaan is a poem consisting of four quatrains, of which each line begins with the same letter. Starting with the second stanza, take the second letter of the first line of the first stanza to begin each line. For the third stanza, use the second letter on the first line of the second stanza, with each line beginning with that letter. For the fourth stanza, use the second letter on the first line of the third stanza, with each line beginning with that letter. The rhyme scheme is abab.

Grace has provided an example to help us. It’s tricky! I found inspiration in an old poem.

32 thoughts on “This is the Time of Ghosts”

  1. That is an eerie time to wait in public places and being free to wander around. Yet the heaviness of obligations, sins and broken promises linger on. Love the trolaan poem Kim. This is favorite part:

    helpfully, a librarian ghost traces
    haiku as he escorts you to a chair.

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  6. the pass will, always hang over our heads like a dark shadow, like those ghosts of our pasts that haunt us all, and, we’re, too scared, too, unready to deal with our pasts, and so, we keep on, running, trying to escape, not knowing, that we simply, can’t outrun our own, pasts, that the only way that they will stop haunting us is if we, turn around, and FACE them…but we still, all try to, escape from our pasts.

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  7. Ghosts tend to linger everywhere some are just more quiet than others. Perhaps, they have found some atonement for their sins and broken promises. I guess we are all guilty but, I hope there is forgiveness in the last breath.

    At first I thought the ghost was a reference to words ….loved the line abut the haiku…perhaps, it is the about the ghosts of our poetic world.

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  11. Some ghosts seem to linger until the sense of sins and wandering are no longer pressing perhaps, I remember one house we lived in (old by local standards here) there was a presence I felt and once saw, and when I talked to them about being free to go, they did. This tapped into my experience Kim, thanks for the evocation. But also thank you for a great Trolaan

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