Sean Campbell
Ghost Plant

On the page are pictures of the mother-
of pearl plant, nicknamed ‘ghost plant’,
red like the rock walls it grows on,
like acne boiling along dry skin.
A moment before, I’d never learned its name.
A second longer, I might have overlooked it.

Yet it would continue flowering,
hoarding water in the niches of cold places,
bundled in aquamarine colors of statues.
I should like to carve into the world
making my way to spotting every living thing,
but still there would be one life left.

This one little plant in the hollow of a cliff,
will go on without me, and I a ghost to it.

_ _

Sean Campbell’s poems and prose have appeared in Boston Review, American Drivel Review, and the Copperfield Review. He holds an MFA from Emerson College.

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