My Campus Full of Ghosts
My Campus Full of Ghosts
By. MJB
I
The Crow
I’ve seen a single crow at least seven times this week.
It’s only Wednesday.
I know it is the same crow each time
by the way he stares through my eyes,
and into my soul.
He’s trying to tell me something-
I’m sure of it.
The suddenly crisp Fall wind appeared overnight.
It carries his call over my head on my walk to class.
It carries echoes of a change coming.
II
The Tower
There is a legend on Campus I’d like to tell you.
It goes like this:
Once there was a troubled girl
With hair of gold and ringlet curls.
Her major, music; Her soul, unsound,
From her dorm, she hit the ground.
She’s there today; They see her still.
On that fifth floor her voice is shrill.
She’ll open doors and slam them, too.
So do take care- the ground sees you.
I know not of the truth of this tale,
but I know each student envies her from time to time.
For better or worse she is trapped here forever.
Maybe in fiction. Maybe in truth.
But in our minds and mouths most assuredly.
Does that make her real? I know not.
Perhaps it just makes her
a ghost.
III
Student Work
I work
in a minimum wage student job
just off campus.
7 dollars an hour
will get you a sweet little boss named Lisa
who brings bagels from time to time.
However-
you will spend most of your time
sifting through obituaries to update the alumni data-base,
and sorting through pictures of former students in the basement
who have died, had their boxes donated by great grandchildren,
and been forgotten.
…Not by me, though.
I take the time to sort through their notebooks,
and portraits
to know them each (or at least to imagine who they may have been).
Does that mean
that within me lives a few dozen long-gone people?
If that does happen to be the case-
what does it say for my death?
IV
The Old Hall
They demolished my favorite building on campus.
I don’t understand why.
It was breathtaking
with its streaked and cracked windows that loomed over passing students,
and the rafters that moaned in the wind to say hello as they peered down at you.
The building was demolished within 2 days without a second thought.
I certainly hope
that it is not a crime punishable by death
to have chronically creaking bones.
The building hadn’t actually been used in years.
It was just storage that was occasionally traversed by nosey students
(definitely not me and my roommate on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon).
I always found it curious
that we had a campus of new buildings, a planetarium, a green house…
and we chose to explore what had been forgotten.
We craved the old world much more than our own.
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