Violet and Lucia leave their graves and meet
by the cemetery gates beneath the leaning oak.
There they talk in the code that they invented once
so no one in the hospital could understand
what they were on about. Now the ghosts can’t either.

Sometimes, I go in and I meet them there.
Lucia let me know their secret code,
recognising I was a kindred spirit.
I talk about the world beyond the cemetery.
Sometimes I boom my poems out for them.

I like to dance the fish dance with Lucia
up and down the lanes while Violet watches us.
That’s particularly nice when it’s raining lightly,
or when the moon shines brightly on a cloudless night,
and illuminates Lucia’s winding form,
turning like a vision through the stones ahead

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Bruce Hodder lives and writes in Northampton, England. His work has appeared widely. His last book ‘The Journey Home’ was published by Whiskey City Press.