The proof is the results.
There hasn’t been a family yet
who’ve stayed more than a week.
That “For Sale” sign is as much
a part of Marchant Manor
as the death’s head on the knocker,
the parlor’s shadow loom of spider webs,
the candle flickering
in the attic window late at night.
And nothing outlandish, grandiose,
in your warnings from the spirit world.
You are as subtle as a floorboard creak,
a wisp of white glimpsed
by the corner of an eye,
a baby crying softly in a childless home,
an unexplained tear on a dresser.
Specters, wraiths, phantoms, apparitions,
and all the disembodied beings extant,
good job, I say
and may you always drive the
argumentative parents, squabbling kids,
chain smokers, loud snorers,
telephone-gabbers, TV-watchers,
heavy metal music lovers,
back to where they came from.
I mean, how much haunting
can a poor ghost take.
