Thirds of a Ghost

They’ve packed a whole umbrage of courtiers

into their rattletrap conveyance, something between

a landau and a saloon. But nobody wants

to tell the young Queen she has to sit on the hump in front

with her dad’s sweaty arm draped on the seat behind her.

The ball game on the radio

comes in each time they crest a hill, then fades

like fog in the static-filled valleys. In this country

the water towers are taller than the churches,

and just as dangerous. A man, a distant cousin,

slipped one day on his painting scaffold

while putting the L in Blackduck or Elk River,

slipped and fell like the neighbor’s cat, picked up

and dropped by an eagle. He wasn’t even drunk;

it’s just so hard

being careful all the time. On the long drive

they play Three Thirds of a Ghost, but it bothers her

to take away part of someone who’s barely there

to begin with.

Last year in school they did Fiddler on the Roof,

and she lay in bed in the dream scene being Golde

while phantoms danced in a synthetic fog

on the floor of the school gym, but the fog was wrong,

it was oily and somebody slipped and disappeared

and someone else tripped on them, and soon the phantoms

were all invisible and crying

till someone turned off the machine and opened a window.