This Bridge Across by Christopher Gilbert

  This Bridge Across

  A moment comes to me and 
  it's a lot like the dead 
  who get in the way sometimes
  hanging around, with their ranks
  growing bigger by the second
  and the game of tag they play
  claiming whoever happens by.
  I try to put them off
  but the space between us
  is like a country growing closer
  which has a language I know
  more and more of me is
  growing up inside of, and
  the clincher is the nothing
  for me to do inside here
  except to face my dead
  as the spirits they are,
  find the parts of me in them --
  call them back with my words.
  Ancestor worship or prayer?
  It's a kind of getting by--
  an extension of living
  beyond my self my people taught me,
  and each moment is a boundary
  I will throw this bridge across.
 

from Across the Mutual Landscape.  Graywolf Press, 1984.