Tim Gardiner

Not all houses are haunted

I recall mum walking me up to the farm to see dad taking hop vines off the tractors, hanging them on the thrasher in the barn with the raw of the furnace hard to ignore.

same cloth cap
same dusted smile
snug waistcoat
buttoned-up…
the past

I never saw the scuppet pusher’s ghost. The oast house was no place for a girl. Brother heard him sweeping one time on the upper deck of the drying tower. Time and time again, I came here alone after dad left us. But I never heard or saw anything. The kiln was abandoned, the smell of dried hops had gone.

stone cold furnace…
sometimes it takes
a ghost
to recognise
a ghost

Mum still draws me back on birthdays. There is laughter, the hounds running free for once. But HE is missing. He always will be. Forgiving is harder than forgetting. There is little connection between two worlds, one grey and bleak in winter rain, the other yellow and green, vibrant like the coppice in spring.

we talk
while the owl calls…
after the night before
a long morning
sobers up

When I heard his terminal diagnosis, I headed over to the oast house. It had not changed. Alone, I waited. Then the scrape of scuppet shovel on wood. The scent of ale. He turned the corner, fixed my gaze with the same uncertain eyes. I remember that.

I am still waiting
for tower swallows
the freedom of emptiness…
on old boards
the same sunrise

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About the Author 

Dr. Tim Gardiner is an ecologist, editor, poet and children’s author from Manningtree in Essex, UK. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies. He previously served with Tish Davis as co-editors of the tanka prose section of Haibun Today .