Echoes and Ghosts

Under leafless branches, five echoes of people who used to be sit close around a lowly crackling fire. Flames lick a long-dry corpse, devouring hard rings of hard memories.

Ghosts of songs long since sung linger in leaping shadows, whispering in ears, pulling smiles out from weight of years. Hidden behind weary eyes, younger faces steal frightened glances, hoping the fire might reveal friends long since near forgotten.

Strangers made by weight of time gaze from one to another, seeking hints of younger days. Hints and echoes of memories shared, of mischief done, and truths once bared.

Among the five, an empty space. Where once another might have sat in long gone days. Memory's eye puts them there, aged to match the five. Blurred of face and faint of voice, each imago a result of a different choice made long ago.

First to speak, one gives voice to the ghost of ghastly choice. Remembers well sun-kissed days, before they each took separate ways. Another joins the chorus. Each in turn takes their mark, preferring to avoid the stark reminder of their once whole circle now made porous.

One by one and each by each, they take their turn to speak their mind. Telling tales of lives lived well, telling tales of aught that fell into their path, telling always tales devoid of wrath.

Among the five with one space vacant, none voice anger at the turn of days. No vengeful mutters. No drawing shutters of the soul against the pain of years, the wind in which hopeful fire gutters.

Seasons pass in minutes fleet, hours before any nod in honour to the empty seat. Each in hand they raise a glass in their own time, to a time long since passed. One drink alone they share with ghosts, with just one sip they make their toasts to a history in which they were once engrossed.

From halting mouths to waiting ears, they pass tales of where they'd been in recent years. Friends and lovers and lonely tears, shared at last with one-time peers. They laugh and cry as time flies by, remembering all that once had been and share between them once again, those shy and cocky grins remembered fondly since youth's long-set sun.

Away they drift with spirits high, when the stars begin to flee the lightening sky. An orange glow in the east does rise, pricking their over tired eyes with tears unshed for those who've died. And tears as well for those who fell, by the wayside in the turning of so many years.

To their friends waiting them where homeward journeys end, they will attempt to name the sense of that one night. A single turning of the moon for which the poet hidden within does swoon. A dance of stars and shadows bright, lingering in that single night.

Never will they find the words, never put to page nor into verse, no matter how long they might rehearse. Never will they know the way to describe what happened to them that day. How can they find their voice, to describe that singular choice, to sit beside a fire bright all the long and lonely night with echoes and ghosts of those long since lost.

Each will only shake their head, when asked about the evening when they shed the mask of years and spoke again with open ears to those who once knew their deepest fear. "You had to be there" they will say with a gentle smile at those who care, and those who ask why one night shared with echoes and leaping shadows and a ghost means quite so much.