Robert McDonald

None of Us Are Elected

When the leaves run across the driveway, their scuttering becomes the contents of my latest memorandum. I ought to explain that in this matter I am licensed to act for the committee of ghosts who inhabit the farmhouse on the hill. None of us are elected, everyone volunteers: the spirit that possesses the rat snake basking on the porch, the kindly old man, intangible, who lives in the basement, down among the bricks of the original foundation. He might be the father, or the husband, of the woman who sometimes sits invisibly at the foot of your bed, but he’s reticent enough not to say. We often convene in the orchard, after midnight. The thud as early apples drop; that is one statement. The cough of a white-tailed deer is an argument, while the quickly silenced shriek of a rabbit, as it feels itself lifted in the talons of the owl, I believe that was the minutes of our last meeting.