The Ghost of Dale Hawerchuk

A siren wailed on Furby street

Where Desperate Measures come to meet

Over coffee and disparity

To talk about The Ghost

 

Nobody knows the reasons why

Vengeance or another try?

A moment that keeps passing by

A visit from The Ghost

 

He’ll sit with you while you sup

Quietly, not to disrupt

Ask who’s favoured for The Cup

A contemplative ghost

 

You can try to reassure

Exorcise or just endure

The spirit who cannot abjure

His life now as a ghost

 

This is never what he wanted

To leave the ice rink rafters haunted

With banners never hung or flaunted

Diaphanous as ghosts

 

Anguished wails and bleeding walls

Not the work of ghouls at all

Fans aghast at awful calls

Refs summoning The Ghost

 

A too familiar icy chill

Crackling the windowsill

Bottom of the standings still

Winter loves a ghost

 

Promises come limericks

Luck deflects off broken sticks

Hanging hope on high draft picks

Our once and future ghosts

 

I don’t believe in you, you’ll say

Why don’t you just go away?

The past is no comfort today

Leave us, wretched Ghost

 

He doesn’t bother to reply

Simply nods his head goodbye

Skates off with a lonely sigh

The burden of a ghost

 

The Desperate Measures now adjourned

To sift through what they might have learned

Of chances missed and bridges burned

To rid themselves of ghosts

 

Tales as tall as Evergreen

Meanings as they need to mean

You pour your life into a team

It makes of you a ghost

 

Some say he is living still

Not breath upon your windowsill

He never has and never will

Come to you as a ghost

 

But Furby street is in the know

When the winter winds a-blow

Gird your expectations, lo!

Greatness is but a ghost