They are gone now. Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone.
– Cormac McCarthy

see him now wandering still
through the Truganina marsh
in tattered tracksuit, broken baseball cap,
bad walking cane scratching at the paths
before the slow shuffle
of his tiny, duct-taped runners.

he was here before I was, before my folks migrated.
they used to say he was stuck out of time;
this old geezer forever on the one route
from West Altona across the swamps to Laverton
then back again, every day – rain, hail, or shine.
they called him the Ghost.

I’d hang out with the neighbourhood kids
on the Reschke Court cul-de-sac, skateboards in tow.
at the mouth of the street you’d see
the Ghost cross: this tiny, clunky thing
wobbling to and fro, the way a child
pretends to walk a toy figurine.

the younger kids, the meaner ones
would skate after the Ghost, wheeling behind.
they’d taunt him, chucking bark bits and bottle caps:
50 points if ya knock off his hat!
he’d brush away the barrage like it was houseflies
and press on, undisturbed.

here the rumours grew of the Ghost’s past.
Colin Sheedy spotted the Starry Plough
embroidered on the sleeve of his bomber jacket,
so told us all he was an Irish National
loyal to the Ursa Major, haunted by the Troubles
thoughts now doused in blood of the dead.

but then Nick Portello reckons he saw
a genuine Hell’s Angels tattoo on the Ghost’s neck;
Nick’s old man, up in Pentridge, had one.
we didn’t buy that the Ghost was a bikie,
he was of a horse and cart era
and to me, he just seemed too gentle.

my Dad drank with the fogies at the bottle-o
and they all thought the Ghost was a crim in hiding.
Mum was more sympathetic. she thought him
to be Saint Roch reincarnated, and he trekked
that route across the swamp each day
because he was looking for his lost dog.

I’d see him, riding around the streets at dusk,
the loneliest time in Laverton back then.
it’d be 40-something degrees and the ghost would be
wrapped up in his scruffy black garb;
his ashen moustache trembled and dripped with sweat.
his old, squirreled eyes set on the path ahead.

see progress shove itself into the unlikely nook,
unwanted, refused. the suburb then sprawled
and the train station was refurbished;
the Māori and poor whites were edged out
and those old bogan loons of Bruno’s bottle-o
were nipped by creatures and cancer.

all this change around so that Laverton
soon caught up to the 21st century.
blocks of medium density dwelling
for the new, rosy families.
the bottle-o evolved to a cheeky café
and the pot-holed roads were remade.

still there would be the skyline of Melbourne
seen from the top of the station’s overpass.
and there would be a graceful cool change
come in off the swamp to break the stifled air,
and the dusk streets still retained the peace
of scattered kids whose imaginations flared.

and you’d think along with the old vanguard
that the Ghost would be gone,
but there he was, come up from a
graveyard of construction,
tottering that bad cane, the slight breeze
that rocked his tiny frame.

nowadays, though, he moved slow;
He was stuck out of time, said Mum.
he was alone, more so. those that taunted him either
moved away, went to prison or died.
in the streets the Ghost would pause to rest.
just stand there still, and rest.

the milk bar, post office and Polish butcher
were all abandoned, boarded up and chained.
back in the day, the wood and shutters
would have been tagged in crude graffiti scrawls
thrown up by the silly, vulgar gangs of yore
I’d have been part of them.

I’d visit my father at the nursing home.
docile and hunched in a reading chair,
brushing bent fingers over the page of a book
I recognised from childhood.
in the shaft of warm windowlight
the few stray hairs on his head glinted.

I’d come to know quite a few people
buried at the Altona Memorial Park, a resting place
surrounded by freeways and warehouses.
we laid my mother there.
the priest’s prayer boomed over
the blow of a Kenworth’s dual-exhaust.

now he was all but bone, the Ghost.
pure relic of the streets and swamp.
he exchanged his walking route for the train.
on the platform, he’d hear
a horn sound and wince in fright
as though it was a trumpet of death.

he was always marching on, persistent.
you’d see it fixed on his face.
his perseverance was so humble. no jonesing
for grog or junk, that manic desperate gait.
he was craving home, I reckoned.
a place to be still, and feel good.

I would like to imagine he had
someone waiting for him after his treks.
he’d wander against the fiery sky, wreathed in smog
push through the front gate at final light
and be seated at a table before a plate,
across from someone who loved him.

ordinary legend of no real weight or gravitas
whose rumours diminished a small, dignified life;
to have haunted the mind of a suburb
and not even know it, a fixture of the streets
as much as the architecture, now gone
in a past that slowly fades with us.