Purchase Joanne's New Book Hospice House »

Joanne the Poet - The Poetry of Joanne M. Clarkson

“The Ghosts of Beautiful Selves” in Fall online edition to Months to Years

My poem “The Ghosts of Beautiful Selves,” about how our dead loved ones come back to us, is up now in the Fall 2024 issue of the journal Months to Years. You can read the whole edition at http://monthstoyears.org/Fall-2024. This beautiful publication is full of moving stories, poems and artwork dealing with grief and loss. I am so honored to have my work included. It is sometimes difficult to picture those who have crossed over. And how they do come back within our visions and dreams is not always how we expected. Here is my poem:

The Ghosts of Beautiful Selves

I can no longer picture my mother,

last memory of a face

erased. I can study her fading photos.

I can bring back the timbre

of her voice, her common sayings

but her expression flickers, quick

sequencing too fast to capture.

How many years has it been?

How many false apparitions?

I once heard a Seer say

ghosts always come back

as their most beautiful selves.

Healed of both wounds and aging.

Retro-fitting their youth with touch-ups

as if mirrors hold forever

a stash of fashions

and every shade of blush.

My grandmother described

her daughter as the prettiest girl

in a time before she ever dreamed of me.

My mother was never the person

in the sickbed. She rejected such a body

decades ago. I press my eye against

a kaleidoscope of old circumstance.

Grief reforms into crystal beads

the way, at a distance, colors coalesce

into a landscape, a village,

one new yet familiar face.

Leave a Reply