Wilderspool Causeway

i.m. Howard Hughes of The Unexplained podcast

It’s not to muffle you
that I have these earphones, but to listen
to stories from an unknown world
we may return to or come back from,

a mist-wreathed island where definition blurs
between one land and another
soul in transit who ditched the ferryman

and now returns to unnerve or comfort
as you leave the house for a vape or cigarette.

Perhaps this man is from the depths
of history, saw the white light or tunnel
to a generative source and thought
All this calling and movement is not for me.

I’ll wither one day like summer’s oak
on time floes, but my cycle’s done.

I stay here at peace, by the living haunted
or arrive in dreams, by you co-opted.

So with ears blocked, I listen to a story
of one who changes but neglects to move on
from thin places just beyond the veil
where we sense a real soul
or fabricated spirit charges

in energy fields the living transform.