Tricks of the mind

Often, drifting on the edge of sleep, or
wakefulness, I am visited by ghosts.
Diaphanous images floating across memory,
lost to the passage of years, but now found.
As after a rain, a desert springs to life,
there grow long dormant seeds, friends and
lovers, words and deeds, sorrow and gladness,
pain and pleasure, all the dichotomies
of life resolved to join together again.
I find them a reassuring comfort, they are
glimpses at treasures buried by the mind’s
age, cloistered in a monks habit, hooded
by the cloth of years, gliding for an encounter
to shine their life’s lantern light upon my path,
for a moment pushing back gathering darkness,
then fading toward a sunset, into forgotten time.

©2013, Donald Harbour