A Strong, Dark Start

It’s a sort of life—
Ghosts grow from shame; shame
Prompts the birth of ghosts.

Blame the ghosts or blame
The shame, it’s as if
You chose to blame eggs

For hens, if the hens
Grew up shaped like eggs,
Large eggs that hatched legs

But not beaks or wings
And made more eggs, still,
In some way, like shame.

It’s a strong, dark start
And a hard, pale end
For the ghosts of shame.

Seeds blow on the wind
To the eggs, but they
Keep what they take in,

Long since that wind ceased,
Since new kinds of seeds
Blew in. A ghost stays

Shamed by what shame was
For that ghost, and breeds
Ghosts for their own shame

They’ll take as they get.
For what makes a ghost
If not that it haunts?

Ghosts stay, if they’re ghosts;
The stay’s what makes them.
Shame’s just what floats in,

And if it seeds them,
It does not shape them.
If you can keep out

Shame, there’s a small chance
Your ghosts will die out.
Don’t let more drift in.