Half the guests are gone

Before I roll out of bed

to peer bleary-eyed around the curtain

and out at the sun-starched morning. 

Some of the lounge chairs in the court-yard

are already claimed by the old men

who will sit there through the day,

watching out into the horizon over the lake. 

The pool is littered

with roasting adults, towels, beach patter,

and the children who have no fear

of water, diving boards, or sunburn. 

The old men will stare unblinking

out into the distance,

out over the pool,

over the lake

as if the tension in their gaze

held the children up in the water

held the sun up in the sky.

On the broken walks behind

the buildings the maids are

cataloging their hardware

their soaps, their air freshener.

They push their carts from room to room

taking their coffee communion.

I hear the ring of their keys

the clasp of subsequent doors,

as they purify each room in turn.

I hear the drone of their voices across the morning.

Talking, apart from the ritual, like old priests,

working with casual routine.

But in the tiny rooms,

They gather in dark groups

and find a new intensity

to reconstruct among them

the pieces of life lived in their domain.

We, the living are gone

But that is not what they are for.

Theirs is what has been left behind:

The covers dashed in the bed,

the hair in the sink,

tissue in the trash.

Inhaling the odor of our spirits passing

they are harvesting pieces of time

that for us is passed on,

they mold soft mental figures

from the rustle we've left in the drapes.

the angle of the TV

the towel in the tub

the print in the pillow

the forgotten sock.

All is pressed into the wax of their minds.

They are untouched by the living.

We pass unseen,

in separate dimensions

body boldly passing through body.

They prepare the ritual stones,

tear away shrouds,

leaving altars naked, raw, and cold

The bedmaking begins with

a wave against the wall

while the white billows forward. 

Buzzing on the wind, the chant rises

locust-like while all of the living

begins to dim.

Fainter now, the noise of the TV's

and the guests in the halls

Fainter the sounds from the pool.

All yielding to the resonance

now forcing itself on the yard.

rising and falling with the sheets over the beds.

Resting their eyes

The old men nod backward and asleep

their mouths open and snoring into the wail.

What was held by their vision

now rises on the dream of sound.

Between the blowing linen in the wind

I begin to remember

the clamor of the party last night

and the couple from Ohio who came in late.

Again I hear my son moaning in his sleep

but as I turn to look

I remember he is already gone to the pool

out there with the other children now

fading into the thin air

out over Lake Michigan

The covers buckle and snap

while the maids call to lives before.

bleached flowers blooming,

pulling dim, barely forgotten,

figures from below.

Oh, their arms stretch high

muscle taunt and sweat

drawing night air and mist from the mats.

Winking out living lights,

they are calling us back into yesterday.

raising the dead,

these mistresses of discarded nights.

As the old men shrivel

as ghosts rise howling from their throats;

as the Maids suck the children

through the pool filters

amazed up into their hide-a-beds

as the sun stops frozen in the sky;

as even I am becoming what I was

and rise up from the sheets

face to face

eye to eye.