Nomad
The wails that disturb very few in their bed
Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead
*
A grave overgrown with deep-rooted weeds
No flowers here, no one tending their needs
Even the weeds are now wilted through drought
And someone below knows it’s time to get out
At first the soil heaves and its arid soil cracks
Two marble angels have now turned their backs
A skeletal hand pushes up from below
A cloud hides the moon for the moon mustn’t know
Another hand pushes aside broken earth
And a part rotted face displays faux grinning mirth
One hand takes stock of the other’s third finger
The ring rattles bone where the flesh didn’t linger
Thus in the gloom of a chilled moonless night
Nobody gasps and no-one takes flight
The newly raised corpse snubs the night’s frigid bite
Leaving its grave to be found in the light
His gait expeditious, those aural assaults
Drive him apace as direction he courts
The wails that disturb very few in their bed
Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead
For so many weeks a shadowy form
Wanders alone like a mourner forlorn
Only night people and those that live ‘out’
Bear witness to him as he travels about
But always the moon and the stars look away
His shadowy form never seen in the day
He moves grave to grave with a purposeful gait
He will not be beckoned and he will not wait
He goes town to town on his skeletal feet
By way of the alleyway and unlit street
He’ll use any route that is dark and discreet
He has no desire, for the living, to meet
So many sightings are never relayed
Though one ‘lucky’ vagrant’s composure is frayed
A cop takes his statement and stands there dismayed
He isn’t convinced and he’s hard to persuade
The sightings reach fifty across many miles
Two drunks are shook by the broadest of smiles
“It looked like a skull,” Cyril mutters to Giles,
“That’s the last time I go out on the tiles.”
Graveyards across the land each get a visit
Till one night a priest walking late says, “Who is it?”
A shadow-man kneels by a recent dug grave
The priest hurries home for he isn’t that brave
The wails that disturb very few in their bed
Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead
With both boney hands on the freshly dug mound
The wailing abates and he hears not a sound
The shadow man watches a small swirling mist
In the shape of a hand that reaches for his
The hand of a wife that is so sorely missed
The hand draws him in and he doesn’t resist
*
By day the priest visits the now silent grave
The grave of the woman who had been so brave
She’d been claustrophobic but still went inside
the caves where his daughter was trapped by the tide
His daughter was saved but the woman had drowned
They knew that no husband would ever be found
He died long ago and she’d let it be known
She feared an eternity dark and alone
And so with the passing of many a night
The priest wonders what stopped the wails in the night
The wailing, now silent, he never would miss
But one night he did hear the sound of a kiss
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