The Ghost

I ripped another page from the calendar hanging on my kitchen wall. We enter the month of May with thoughts of Spring swimming around in our heads. The sun is shining bright on the days it isn’t raining. The snow vanished into distant memory. This month I plan to explore a poetry style that reminds me of a trickling waterfall. Udit Bhatia created the Cascade poem. There are no rules for rhythm or meter. The layout is simple in that the lines of the first stanza are repeated as the refrain lines in the stanzas that follow. The poem flows like this ABC, xxA, xxB xxC. Add lines to the poem longer. Thus, you are making a cascading effect with words. How hard can that be? This Cascade Poem I titled The Ghost.

Note: I will also be adding Black Out Poems as we go along the way. I plan to keep using this style until the book I’m using runs out of pages for me to play with to create these unique and visual poems. I might as well get started. I’m excited about jogging down this road.

The Ghost

The Ghost
Daddy. I blinked; you went away
Vanishing into the dark night
Only a ghost from the past
A phantom of a distant memory

“Time heals all wounds,” they say
And that is supposed to make it alright
How long does the pain last?
Daddy, I blinked; you went away.

Words that were spoken in the heat of a fight
Echoed through our house like a nuclear blast
You left, and the sky turned grey
Vanishing into the dark night

Life in shadows, a harsh contrast
Experience the cold wind of poverty
A place of struggle with blurred sight
Only a ghost from the past


Your disappearance was always a mystery
The answer was more than I wanted to pay
With a child’s heart so steadfast
A phantom of distant memory. 

Who is Molly Shea?

Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh.  To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.

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This is the blog where the Henhouse lady lives.

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