All Saints' Day

            I want to sleep a while, . . . a minute,
            a century; but let everyone know that I am
            not dead.
                          Federico Garcia Lorca

When I was eight, no one believed there were ghosts
in our house, except a close friend who heard them

turn on the upstairs faucet once, the air chilled
when we arrived in time to catch them disappearing

through the hallway's blanched walls.  Truth is
they were there all along.  I heard their heels

tapping the floorboards.  At night they slithered
beneath my bed, terrified me until Mother cradled

my head so I could doze off, phantoms, demons,
ghouls, wickedness vanishing in her presence.
                 
                                    *

At sixteen I nearly became a ghost,
illness squeezing the will and drive out of me.

That night I floated above myself into a lucid sky,
the fear of dying gone so that over the years

I have come to respect ghosts, their unexpected
appearance, the need to suspend belief

in order to feel their presence.  I suppose
you might say I’m good at it after all this time.

                                    *

Recently in Bolivia on All Saints’ Day, my basket
overflowed with sacks of flour, candy, fruit

and drink for the spirits of the dead.  My husband
and I had just returned from market, our deceased

relatives about to visit.  We prepared beans in hot
sauce, egg biscuits, chicha morada, a rich corn drink.

Legend says the dead protect us if we take care
of them.  To highland Indians, this means strong rains

for crops.  We lined a table with bread-baked llamas,
sheep and birds to carry souls back from far-off lands.

At noon, church bells rang the arrival of the souls.
My husband and I ate enough for two, knowing

that whatever we consumed would, by faith, satisfy
the dead.  The next day we set a small feast

on cemetery graves.  Resiris, supplicants, prayed
for the dead while we bid farewell to our relatives.

                                    *

Back home, I mull over Lorca’s words, mull over
how not to die, how to leave something behind:

a sculpture, a well-taught child.  Mull over
if the highland Indians have it right:  that after we die

our souls climb out of the prayers of descendants,
bowed over our graves, so they can release us

from death once a year to wander earth and revere it
the way we should have when we were alive.

Previously published in Death Comes Riding (SCOP Publications, Inc., 1999)
Reprint rights granted by the author