Today's poem is by William Woolfitt

Ghost Picture (Aubade with Pink Muckets)
       

The sun clambers over the husk
of the button factory, brushes
the tarp-roof of our fishing shack.
We burrow under pillows,

mimic stones, sink from light,
like the pink muckets who bedded
in river-cobble until the factory
forked them up, cut their shells

into round button-blanks. Until
the factory belly-upped: too much
button polish soured the Ohio,
softened the mucket shells

to puce jelly. Spilling into
our shack, the sun dampens hair,
poultices our skin with sticky heat
as we pull on dungarees, slip

outside, try to net spooneys,
flatheads, relic-fish with no bones,
no teeth. Mile-a-minute vines
swallow the factory, its afterimage

sheening the water—ghost picture
that lingers until a barge glugs by,
churns it to froth and scum.

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Copyright © 2024 William Woolfitt All rights reserved
from The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go
Belle Point Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission