The ghost.(No poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)

 
The ghost 
 
   The shabby, dishonored, unnamed ghost 
   who haunted my parents' dream life like a guest 
 
   must have been, I realized thirty years late, 
   my father's alcoholic father, who, light 
 
   on his feet, jitterbugged through our Pittsburgh childhood 
   with debts, girlfriends, his leathery moods-- 
 
   a figure beyond our suburban world. 
   When his car roared up, my mother's lips curled 
 
   downward, not that we cared, glad for his hoarse 
   attentions, his dark growl-laugh, the source, 
 
   I now know, of my father's apish guffaws. 
   Why didn't we recognize his flaws, 
 
   the headaches that kept him in bed, weekend mornings, 
   his lack of a job? There must have been other warnings, 
 
   and yet we were too young for the secrets slurred 
   in every sentence, almost every word. 
 
   Only once, I recall, did we visit him. 
   Somewhere in Ohio, caretaker at a ...