Tag: Living with Ghosts

Read Me (Dream #100825)

It’s 9 o’clock my time
barely three for you
but it’s no matter
we’re decades apart —
not hours —
only ghosts
here in the library
where I race to find
the book
I need you to read
before the alarm goes off
and I wake to the day
where it’s just a fine gold thread
that connects us now.

I pass long tall stacks
of coffee table books and
the bust of Blackstone
in the halls of recorded memory —
yours and mine —
and you seem not to notice
the immediacy of the moment
when I approach with insistence,
your retired posture almost welcome
were it not for the clock ticking
next to me in the bed we used to share,

but by then the words have disappeared
from the pages in your lap
and in exchange, a collage of
nonsensical images
fall to the ground at your feet
rendering me speechless
in that dreamworld way,
paralyzed by all I have left to say,
gasping for moonlit breaths.

Poem and photo ©2025, Jen Payne. The bust in the photo is actually James’ son Timothy but that’s too many syllables. If you like this poem, you’ll love my new book SLEEPING WITH GHOSTS, on sale now!

Tags Connecticut Poet, dream poems, dreamwork, Jen Payne, life with ghosts, Living with Ghosts, Memoir, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts

Creativity Poetry

Pandora’s Consort

You are legend
suddenly made flesh
but no comparison
to the mythology
I have constructed for you.
its scaffolding
felled akimbo
by your presence,
poetry strewn
in incomplete sentences
across the timeline;
mere mortals are not made for this;
we fail by our very nature,
destroy the sacred altars of memory,
light fires to its sweetness,
and burn down walls of forgetfulness;
best put you back in the box,
close the lid tightly
before even Hope escapes
the happy ending
I wrote on our behalf

Tags auld lang syne, Connecticut Poet, dream poems, Jen Payne, life with ghosts, Living with Ghosts, Memoir, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts

Creativity Poetry

Dreamcatcher

Maybe it was the full moon
or just the occurrence
of these days of ending
things crashing around us
the long slow molting
I want you to know
I tell him
in case I die…
but I am no longer sure
if that was real
or something I said to a ghost

They all come to visit lately
by happenstance
or dream
by the cosmic dust
that connects all of us
or through airwaves
as cluttered as our
atmosphere

Last night
I walked with one —
a ghost —
along a woods road
up into a wide field
of apple trees
and goldenrod
laughing
like old friends

And it was so good
to see him again
that I burrowed back
into sleep
in case he was still there
waiting

Sometimes
when they hover like this
converge in dream spaces
whisper in dark corners
I think
I must be dying
And this is our
mea culpa
our chance to set things right
finally or again

I have no regrets

Tags Connecticut Poet, dream poems, Jen Payne, life with ghosts, Living with Ghosts, Memoir, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts

Memoir

30 Years is a Long Time

At 6:15 this morning I had the thought I should drive to Pennsylvania. Sit at my father’s graveside for a while. Talk about all of the things that have changed in the 30 years since we buried him there, the all of us still in shock about the accident, the sudden death, the things we’d left unsaid.

Thirty years is a long time — almost half my life now — there would be a lot to say.

I hadn’t thought of a cemetery visit, made a plan. The grief is so subtle now, with no demands for place and time. It comes as it will come, whether I am sitting there among rows of stones, or sitting in the woods communing with the spirit of everything.

So that was my choice — the spirit of everything in the woods early this morning, and I was happy for the solitude, the Sunday morning quiet.

While I hoped for a sign — he often appears as Hawk — or a voice on the wind, what I found was gratitude.

A deep and unyielding gratitude for how very well he raised me, how strong he taught me to be; for his laugh and the stick-with-it, positive way he approached life; for his encouragement to dream big and love big.

My favorite story about my Dad was the time he took me sledding when I was about four-and-a-half. He set me up on the sled at the top of a rather large hill and reminded me to steer left when I got to the tree. But I got my left and right mixed up and hit the tree straight on — requiring a race to the emergency room and ten stitches. A few weeks later, he brought me back to that hill and told me to open the glove compartment. Inside was the bloody rag he’d held to my forehead — it was a no-pain-no-gain moment. Then he made get on the sled and go back down the hill because…“When you fall off the horse, you get right back on.”

These days we call that tenacity, perseverance, courage, strength, resilience — all of the things that got 29-year-old me standing graveside to this version of me now. I like to think he’d be really proud.

Tags Family, Grief, Life, Living with Ghosts, loss, Memoir, Memory, remembrance, Sleeping with Ghosts, Writing

Creativity Poetry

Dream, Driving, Rain #05-081725

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date August 17, 2025
No Comments on Dream, Driving, Rain #05-081725

I stayed too long in dreams
so much the day seems flat
and one dimension;
in my mind, the sander
still polishes the leg
of the man who said
“the body always feels pain”
as sawdust coats my throat
too much for words;
a crystal-blue rain falls
with wicked gold lightening
against the wide horizon
somewhere along I-90 in South Dakota,
an angel floating in the back seat
laughs at what we forgot to say,
urges me to Drive! Drive! Drive!
as if I am escaping something;
all the while my mind ticks,
like a clock pacing time,
thinking how to slip you a note
handwritten that says 808.81
and nothing more,
you’re the Sherlock Holmes,
you figure it out;
all these years,
the conversations in my head
and you, deaf and blind or
just resigned to dreams
like me, this morning,
wasting days away
before the knives cut out pieces of me
again, remember?
Like the last time you were here,
the both of us relieved to hear
“she made it.”

Tags Connecticut Poet, Jen Payne, life with ghosts, Living with Ghosts, Memoir, Poem, Poems, poems about dreams, Poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts

Creativity Poetry

Running into Ghosts

The friend who found me
after I lost you
died
and so I lost her, too

there’s a long list of others
lost for various reasons
since then

by default
by accident
by misfortune or miscalculation
or by the eventuality that all things change and nothing is certain

certainly not love
I’ve lost that, too,
too many times

so many times
I’ve stopped counting
one, two, three…
out loud anyway

do you ever wonder why we find them again?
in hallways of dreams,
in lobbies of random buildings
doors opening and closing and time passing on all sides
everywhere
except where you stand
momentarily
lost and found and lost again

Tags Connecticut Poet, Jen Payne, life with ghosts, Living with Ghosts, Memoir, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts

Creativity Poetry

Perennial

there will always be more to say
a one thing I didn’t mention
a question I needed to ask
a reassurance or gratitude
or words I never, ever spoke out loud
a messy, beautiful bouquet
things I’ve gathered
for the next time we meet
by chance or happenstance
petals dropping
even as I walk away
a meadow of words at my feet
forget-me-not
nor I you, ever

Tags Connecticut Poet, Jen Payne, life with ghosts, Living with Ghosts, Memoir, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sleeping with Ghosts

Creativity Poetry

Swashbuckler

His smile was Errol Flynn
from the get-go,
and he made no apologies
for the affect —
the tight jeans
and cowboy boots,
the crisp white t-shirt
sleeves rolled, suntanned arms,
the hair done up and over,
the cologne as alluring
as the charm he used
to catch your attention.
And once he had it,
he’d reel you in slow and steady,
until you would agree to anything
everything
and never look back,
not even now,
all these years later,
where he remains as legendary
as he was those first early days
when you rode the high seas together,
stared up at the wild stars
and knew you would
never
ever
forget.