by Micah Bauman
I was pacing around The Valley again
when I saw a hospital worker approach
a patient who was talking to himself.
I eavesdropped on their conversation.
She asked who he was talking to.
He explained he was reliving times
spent with his friends who weren’t there.
She excitedly asked if he regularly spoke
to ghosts and spirits of his dead relatives.
It didn’t seem exciting to me or appropriate
for a mental health worker to ask a patient.
She said she was always interested
in spirits that might be lurking.
Lost souls walking the halls,
and visiting with patients.
But, maybe the dead were here
before the hospital was built,
and the living are the trespassers.
Perhaps, we are the spirits
or the ghosts, wandering the corridors,
hoping to get well and desperate to get out.
Micah James Bauman has had his poems published in Word Fountain, The Electric Rail, and the Blue Nib, among other places. He has read his poems at local art galleries, libraries and coffee shops. Micah’s first published work was in The Lock Haven Express, his hometown newspaper, in the form of reviews of young adult literature for the Annie Halenbake Ross Library.
