Recently I’ve been thinking about ghosts
ones that seem to have nothing to do with

the enhanced or rather …

accentuated being of those they

appear to, but have their own quest …
Elena told me that her husband had

haunted her, yet only before he died
Then she said she had grown up with …

couple of ghosts in the country. They were

old bushmen that had been murdered or …

maybe just fallen in a hole …
Poetry brought them out she said. When my

father died I went through all his books to

save them from the Salvo’s; I used to go

down to the creek and read the bleaker …

moments of King Lear, and snippets from …

Faerie Queene, though I was barely aware

of their meaning. The ghosts would sidle up

quietly and sit on a log. After I

wondered if they would have smoked if I’d …

offered them tobacco. When I dream …

about them they’re always my father – both

of them. I told Andrew and Janine most

of this last week, when we were heading to

the beach. Andrew was predictably …

skeptical that Elena had ever

been in the bush: it’s that colonial

research crowd she’s mixed up in, he said: as

if they were bootleggers or bikies …
Elena had taken to …

academia in her sixties and

had been experimenting with her hair

colour, having been either blonde or …

brunette (not a mixture as so many

are now) all her life. Andrew always …

insists on the urbanism of …

Australia, as if the country’s …

distant past, and something basically …

shameful. Janine said nothing at the time

it would have been like her though to launch …

into a complex monologue on …

subject about three days later, if we

hadn’t gone off the road soon after …

hit a poplar. Elena’s a very

good public speaker. She has a rich tone

to her voice, encompassing sympathy

irony, dry humour. She has been asked

on occasion to speak at …

funerals of strangers, of people who’d

come to deliver something and had …

heart attack on the steps for example
Elena could make a joke of this …

manner of dying and be thanked for it

afterwards. Elena was speaking

suavely about the self-consciousness she

had felt giving a paper at …

conference on a writer who was in …

room. Then she shifted to …

conversations on ghosts we’d been having

recently. I can see him now she said

in quasi Lady Macbeth voice, standing

by the dahlias; and that’s just where I was
Andrew and Janine were outside, ashing

in the pond, not wanting to have …

anything to do with …

Elena’s ironic praise – how absurd!