NEW POETRY

Riding behind the moonbeams’ reflections
on the Palisades Parkway,
I walk with ghosts:
a younger me, my father,
an abandoned road to nowhere,
both figurative and literal,

snow, white on the ground,
untouched and me beneath it,
haunting me.

The task I always put off.
The footfalls silent but for the crunching of snow
and evergreens
seeking escape where cliffhangers were born
and die and I not far behind.
Never nearly Far enough.

Too seldom on a voyage directed by their voices,
not simply my own.
One tasks me now to leave this trail untraveled still.

Damien Farley from NJ writes only to dead friends and acquaintances, in the hours after midnight. His poems recently appeared or are forthcoming in Maudlin House, Ink in Thirds, Pink Ochre Magazine, Tap into Poetry, Discretionary Love, Dirt Freckles, Rat’s Ass Review, and Soup Can Magazine.

(portfolio image: “The Ghost” by Joseph Mandi)