holidays are for ghosts

what we call now the holidays were holy days once,
i suppose, dangerous days
when the harvest was in and the fruit of time
was ripe on the hearths

a heart full of time knows invisible things
time being the first

and out of time my grandparents accost me
after all, I am living in their former home
am I not
and do I know their invisible selves
I did not, I do not

I think I would like them to approve
of these holiday meals, for instance
but what kind of shape is that for a memory
a sort of mummery wrap
what is frightening of the past is when things not living
move with your own animation
like taking down old photographs to make them dance
Poe could do something with that, do something
with their eyes, have them give
commands

when you die, what is left?
is is what time took out of you
like this house it took out of my grandfathers arms
pulling nails from his blows for affixing studs
pulling the slop from plaster until it hardened over seams

and more it took from my grandmother
children, meals, washing, laughter
and all her fears
where is that house, did it square up or harden
into father, uncles, aunts
houses cannot be found in houses, there is no it
where you say look here
for the invisible thing

it is just a heart full of time that knows
how to look, like my grandmother in her last days
in her dementia
or drug-induced dreams
speaking to me with all the time that was not mine
knowing me as three persons or more
i told her, as any number of them,
what I knew of her that was my own, very little it seemed
just gatherings in this house, at this table
it moved her without knowing my name for more than five minutes
at a time, the animation was from somewhere else
and it could carry no judgement with it at all
since that is the sort of thing that time carries you away from
and leaves in the lumber and scrapes across the seams

if there are ghosts living in holy days
do they wish you had known, could remember what they had been
or are they themselves because they are invisible
in what is left being from time?