The Ghost of the Wind

There’s a ghost in the porch swing.
Some might say it’s just the wind
but they don’t know that the wind
around here is a ghost itself.

You can see it trying to change
things in one way or another
when it flips over a paper cup
and spills beer onto the outdoor furniture.

You can see it trying to remind us
of its significance when it lifts the curtains
up from your windowsills and sends them billowing
in the air like it once did the sails of legendary ships.

But mostly the wind has become content
to laze around the flowers,
to wander through the limbs of trees
and occasionally pull some raucous prank

like flinging an umbrella inside out
or tossing a young man’s ball cap down the street:
small, pleasurable things like retirees do
when they have relinquished their responsibilities

to the world and given in to the push
of the next generation, when they have decided
to live out the rest of their days in a porch swing
because outside the rain keeps coming down.