If ghost people
were the world
we would roam

the empty highways
in search of life.
We would migrate

through the walls
of deserted homes
and become manifest

in abandoned bedrooms
or kitchens to briefly
touch the objects of

the real world in a
way less than human.
We would watch the

fine artifice of man
stealing into ruin
as the centuries

unraveled: highways
cracked to broken slabs
soon lost in wilderness,

cities collapsing stone
by stone into rubble.
We would learn to think

of the changing climate
we are unable to feel
not in months or years

but passing millennia.
We would track strange
species as they appeared

and flourished and evolved
to stranger incarnations.
We would see the earth

turn flat in its crumbling
and watch the seas recede.
With our memories intact

as the sun burned red,
we would howl louder
than the dying wind.

Bruce Boston is the author of forty books and chapbooks, including the novel Stained Glass Rain. His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Nebula Awards Showcase. He lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon.