From the sunlit fringes of cloud
Yesterday’s ghost watches
You, counting your footsteps aloud
Like ounces of black bread
Grudgingly given. Bread hears you,
Salt listens. Salt snatches
Up your musings,
Launches them through
The rusting bars to shred
Clouds, teach water how to cut stone
And pierce cold flesh. The ghost
Of yesterday becomes a bone
Button, seasoned with blood
And fastens rain about your neck,
Makes you yesterday’s host
For one lightning-bolt, a glad wreck,
Haunted at last. The flood
Of your questions rises and falls
Unheeded. Yesterday’s
Ghost whispers to silent stone walls:
I am the wrong answer.