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Ghost Children

by
Helen Ruth Weingarten

The signs are everywhere,
if you glance a certain way.
You can see them standing
by the side of Kensington road,
watching the old women
in Paddington Street Park
put violets in the marble hands
of the boy guarding the rose garden.

Who are these shadow children?
A friend in Amsterdam
first encountered a group of them
among the tourists on a canal barge
near the Ann Frank house.
In Cambodia, they have been sweeping
like grass through the countryside.
On Manilla's crowded streets
they stand with hobbled legs and crutches
at almost all the bus stops.

In Manhatten now,
scores of phantom infants
float among the Salvadorian nannies
pushing strollers on Madison Avenue.
They lie in the arms of Vietnam vets
who sleep in cardboard boxes under
the Queensborough bridge.

Helen R. Weingarten

Helen Weingarten is associate professor emerita at the University of Michigan School of Social Work where she taught both community and clinical practitioners for over twenty years. Currently she is using the time early retirement makes possible to write, to volunteer as a flower arrange/pet visitor with Ann Arbor Hospice, and as a part time faculty member in the Human & Organizational Development program of the Fielding Graduate Institute.