The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2008

The Problem of Ghosts

Once you’ve photographed a ghost, once you’ve got

digital proof through seven frames, why then

you’re never the same – unless of course, you

manage to forget (as you’ve done before)

or dismiss (that too before) or subtract

this bit of antiphysics from the big

picture of absolute uncertainties,

pointing out there’s no equation for this,

not this sort of thing, though dark matter weighs a

precise amount per unit galaxy

yet hides in every other way, as shy

as those round folks floating from room to room,

there, then not, then there (yes, this time more than

one, but just as reticent, just as “ghostly”),

and not to mention the violence done

redshifting figures – dark-energy-wise,

nor to say how benign your new friends be,

or seem to be, perhaps wanting no more

than their own equation, a pedigree

they call theirs, and maybe you a last hope,

you who would never be the same were you

to write down that equation, find the equal

sign, where it goes, just like a coming home.

J. David Cummings