www.TheVisitors.com

They enter through a window at my desk.
I cannot see their faces, nor meet

flesh. No press upon a shaken hand
nor the quick meeting of eyes. They have

no accents. Words come uninflected.
Yet they've visited my life, have found

this street, this house and garden. We trade
in dreams. Hear how they search mine,

impudently rip and burn each memory.
Theirs' strike like matches in my head.

I am vessel for desires, grief, each plangent song.
No one else I know can hear them talk.

They are passed off as invented friends,
I quote them only once.  They're so

light I ferry them on a raft of paper
into rooms they'll never see, walk rides

between spruce while they jostle my mind.
Past phantoms live among them then,

so mingle till it seems they speak
with one voice. Other times I travel

as someone's father or become a wayward son
and then I'm lost in a foreign land

however I signal my intent. I inhabit
an alien skin. To them I have no substance.

I cannot say they judge me
for my age or height or type of smile.

So is it mind to mind, all purified,
or more the troubled talk of kin? The weight

of lifetimes pours in. Faces
I know least of all, but I cannot help

construct a skull, add clay to make
a life-mask for each visiting mind,

a smile that fits and picture them in streets,
in rooms where a window captures breeze,

letters read or unread, beside a half-drunk tea.