Mike Bove: “Roadside Phantoms”
ROADSIDE PHANTOMS
Look there to see some tattered tarp
cast out from a passing pickup
in last week’s wind. We plant fields
with our dead, lay them under trees
with twig-bones snatching airborne bags
and shredded plastic, modernity’s
white noise. I picture my father at the end,
my mother too, how flat they were
on their backs, how cracked their breath.
Reminders of loss are rain-worn crosses
nailed beneath telephone poles, fake
flowers thrust in earth, pale waving tarps
like spirits, gust-frayed fingers trembling,
reminding us everything is haunted,
fields and trees, roadside litter. If we
understand love, all things are ghosts.
Mike Bove is the author of four books, most recently Eye (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). He serves as a 2024 writer in residence at Acadia National Park and is Professor of English at Southern Maine Community College.