I saw a ghost walking down the street
today It wore the face
of a man who was my father almost
thirty years ago
when we lived
by the path that walked below
the Bixby Bridge
This apparition had fifteen years
too many to be the callused hands I knew
and fifteen years too few to have yet become
yellowed and brittle fallen
by the creekside like the cottonwood leaves
A memory's memories must be
holed and creased and worn like
old sandpaper
so if it did not know me well
I was a child then and now
I am not
Looking back
the likeness faded
into a pot belly and glasses
rounded shoulders and a tucked-in polo
I never saw him after all