Grandma's ghost

I guess we all have the occasional "flashback" to our younger days, but recently I had one encompassing two things that happened to me in 1980 and 1986 respectively, the first being an LSD trip (yes I was a naughty boy), the second, a visit to a spiritualist.

This random memory took me quite by surprise whilst in the middle of a totally unrelated task at work (I'm a printing assistant) and stayed with me during my drive home along with the words "I saw a strange old lady" which are the opening lines of the subsequent poem below:

Grandma’s ghost

I once saw a lady

In an armchair by my bed

Gazing down upon me

While I was off my head

A spectre born of acid

Hair devoid of pigment

Visage old and placid

A psychedelic figment

Of my imagination

And yet her vacant smile

Aroused a chill sensation

That froze me for a while

I pulled up the bedsheets

Hid beneath them scared

Till after many heartbeats

And still not quite prepared

I dared to have a peep

Discerned an empty chair

Fell gradually asleep

Relieved she wasn’t there

Slept off the disarray

Dreamed about her not

Awoke well past midday

And very soon forgot

Another five years flew

My friend a psychic said

She was listening to

A relative long dead

“I’ve got your grandma here

And she wants you to know

She’s always very near

Nigh everywhere you go”

She ran a list of things

Dates events names places

Relations gatherings

Long forgotten faces

Of past generations

And anecdotes she told

Of Christmas celebrations

Within the family fold

And I initially

Was quietly sceptical

It didn’t seem to be

Remotely true at all

Or so I thought before

My poetry she mentioned

How grandma liked it more

With rhyming words intentioned

I time travelled mentally

Remembering her there

Staring at me intently

From my old bedside chair

A very strange old dear

From five years back in time

Was she now standing here

Suggesting write in rhyme”?

I couldn’t and can’t decide

If the elderly entity

Had been identified

Was this ancient anomaly

Sedentary by the bed

Fair giving me a fright

A guardian ghost instead

Of what I perceived that night

To be a hallucination

Induced by LSD?

The physics’ revelation

Seemed apt poetically

Since rhyming is my thing

Therefore this one’s in view

Of Doris Margaret King

And the ghost of who knows who

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8Mary-Ann Ambrose, Nicola Burrell and 6 others