Ghosts

She drives down the I-40, going too fast and not caring
when out of the darkness, something catches and sends back the glow
cast by her car’s headlights.
Something about the tree on the side of the road makes her whip her neck around,
trying to keep it in sight as long as possible.
It’s difficult to notice detail when going eighty miles an hour,
but the impression of that tree stood out in sharpest detail,
the high definition of the natural world.

It is a dogwood tree, the blooms still present and capable of reflecting high beams
even now as spring is marching unsympathetically on.
The season has already forced itself upon the grass; green superimposing itself on brown
and birds trespassing on bushes and telephone poles.
She sees the white religious blooms and is struck at how they linger in the air,
the brown in the tree branches the same color as the night, and so remains unrepresented.
The blooms are the specters, leering at the cars as they pass,
and remain unaffected by observation as the girl’s neck creaks ominously.

She is uneasy about those blooms as she hurtles past, pushed forward by
plodding truckers and the impatient rat race of the weekday’s end.
The buds continue to float before her eyes,
and she is suddenly in other memories that are always before her,
forever ready and willing to present themselves if they are given but half a chance:
a snowman on a tissue box, a slice of pizza going uneaten, and another car’s headlights disappearing into the night. The suspended buds become those headlights,
and she turns up the music, drowning out the cries of the haunted.