Ghosts of California

The son had vanished in Plumas County
a postcard memory of Bucks Lake and wind-surfing.
A two-grand elopement with an unpaid Ford Focus
and a disc-full of genre scripts.

Earlier...
There were scattered phonecalls from NorCal,
the phone ringing in the dead of night,
the muddle of coffeeshops and Ghirardelli girls,
good-natured Ukrainian counter-talk.
The son's spirit buyoed, his insistence that--
everything's all right, dad--I'm fine--I needed
to do this--A sharp break--Where I belong--
until the words swarmed in the old man's ear.
until all he could discern was the over-eager tone.

Was it cryptomnesia?
Dormant memory pulling a paper mask,
shuffling in over-sized shoes...
Did the old man remember something from all this
that came back?
Crossing the time zones and old Spanish missions,
the redwoods and Sierras?
A crossword puzzle of hints and promises
that found him back at the house.

The death's head moth curled on the bathroom floor,
the unreturned library tapes
(all Marx Brothers-- The Cocoanuts, Horsefeathers...
Zeppo looking strained),
the spigot clogged with grey shavings.
The son had been 38 when he left,
an old man himself in Hollywood years.
His room remained untouched, cloaked
in chalkdust and incense.
The old man refused to enter.

And yet this night,
returning from his customary walk...
there was a shout down the hall.
A TV sound--loud detectives and gunfire,
a creature's roar.

He's back! thought the old man and
slowly
very slowly
put down his bag and walking shoes,
rinsed a thermos in the sink.
What was it this time? he wondered,
What brought him back?

Yet as he made his way down the hall...
(yes...there was the flicker of the laptop,
the DVD spinning white-blue...)
something unnerving crept over him.
It was too quiet.
Not even the clink of fork on plate,
a shuffle in the bed where the son would
draw his back into the corner,
pressed against a row of paperbacks.
And even as he thought this,
it was all gone.

The old man peered in the door.
But the desk was uncluttered
and the indentation on the bed was unoccupied.