Stelmach

I’m currently working my way through an anthology of ghost poems Chance of a Ghost, to write a review for Gerald England and, whilst it is taking much longer than I’d like due to a continued shortage of reading time, it’s already paid off with a new discovery – Marjorie Stelmach.

So far, I haven’t found out much about her, except that she's Canadian, has one published collection and various poems published in various journals. I'm continuing to dig. Meanwhile, here’s her poem from the anthology (I think the second strophe is outstanding):

DOORWAYS

IN OTHER PEOPLE’S DREAMS

I appear in doorways. I always know
something they should know.
I call them in to hear the tidings, or out
to watch the world do whatever it’s doing.
Sometimes I’ve come to warn them – No.
Don’t look: the shuttle’s crashed;
the beautiful child’s stillborn; wait,
the stairway’s gone.
Then I vanish or my words wake them.
Either way, my part is over.

It’s a gift of sorts, a calling: I appear
and disappear my body like a wink
or a moon,
thin into rooms and out,
as if my cells could take the shapes
of ornamental spaces in a lacework of worlds.

Meanwhile, in my own dreams I move slow motion.
Dreamfields unfold like lifetimes before me;
buffeted by landscapes, I can’t seem to fly.
I watch my doorways fill
with clear gaps where no one stands,
and never will again. I listen.
No word comes.

After years of being told at breakfast or in letters
of my appearances,
I’ve begun to feel an awkwardness in living.
Our comings and goings, the expansions
and contradictions of the air between us,
these cumbersome tissues we call our lives,
how could these be real?

And dreams?
Words spoken in dreams stay
Or they don’t. Screams
doppler off into breakfasts,
words of comfort sink into the sweetened milk.
If, in broad day we suddenly turn
and look over our shoulders at doorways,
it’s nothing. We know we’re alone;
but sometimes
we think we may not be.