All around us

are people

some so present

they tear into

your personal space,

some distant

as mist on the horizon.

There are ghosts

that remember the world

in the time of its infancy

and of ours

and as they wander untethered

by the demands of their former selves

they sometimes pass

a campaign poster,

hover over

the rusted remains

a button

proclaiming the successes

of a failed candidate

in an election that for a time

seemed all there was in the world,

vital to everything,

the future,

the viability of a culture,

life and death.

And yet they remain

these ghosts

some maybe, unknowingly

still of this world

wandering through the streets

that once raged like rivers

of protest

that somehow endure

never succumbing

to apocrypha.

Relentlessly comes the future

victorious is the new

and still we persevere

no matter who is elected president.

 

–Danny Grosso