When I leave me behind

When I leave me behind
it is a ghost that drives --
a specter from a misplaced chess board
and a mantelpiece robbed of frames
wrapped in a stupor
of nutmeg and cardamon peel
bite-less discards
from hard-spice feasts,
When I leave me behind
it's skeletal fingers
that turn and thrust
in eyes-closed familiarity --
but open eyes remember
a covenant easily made
written submissions
from the templates of the dead,
for here's consolation
in vacancy and an empty sky
such canvasses are rare
and a lifetime too short
to encrypt for love yet unborn
the cadences of the undying..