Ghosts

My father was twenty
years older than my mother
when they married—in a photograph 
I remember seeing, she wore no veil
but was the image of simple 

elegance, her slender neck 
emerging from the cowl of a sheath 
dress she sewed herself. No one 
would guess she came from a sleepy 
town far north: the air tobacco-

scented, textured like carabao hide.
In the short interval after that, I know
I was born. What I know of them
as I grew up is wrapped in clouds 
of dusting powder and tang 

of aftershave, rituals of washing 
and dressing, eating and drinking;
the alcove where they stationed 
their saints and shed the cuff 
links and chains of the everyday.

My youngest daughter said one night 
at the dinner table, perhaps our ghosts 
don't really haunt us. Perhaps it is us 
who are their ghosts, for as long 
as we  keep thinking of them.