“death drive and a ghost”

In the hour between the tick and the hush,  
Where moonlight stains the window’s edge,  
A flicker—motion—disturbs the dusk,  
A shadow waltzing the garden hedge.

Once, the ghost was a spark of will,  
Dreams lit like lanterns above the stream—  
Yet now, he drifts in a world grown still,  
Caught in the orbit of one dark dream.

He strains for the memory, out of reach,  
For life’s wild hunger, the pulse and the flame;  
But swallowed by longing no tongue can teach,  
He circles ever the very same.

This is the death drive: a yearning deep,  
To return, dissolve, to silence, to slow—  
While still, the ghost cannot help but keep  
Floating towards what he cannot know.

He passes the photographs hung in lines,  
Glances a child he could have met,  
Brushes the dust from unread signs,  
Whispers to what he must forget.

Still, dawn will lift through the garden gate,  
Washing the lawn in silvery blue—  
The ghost at peace with his tangled fate,  
Haunted by life, not the other view.

The pull remains—unseen, profound—  
Yet in the hush, he is less alone:  
Death drive softened by love unbound,  
A ghost in twilight, finding home.

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