Brisk, this cold October wind, <br />pruning husks of brown-balled leaves <br />into effigies of Autumn's wane, <br />sweeps with besom broom <br />all the cluttered corners, <br />and the recessed secrets, <br />from the hollow's outgrowth, <br />flushed from the shadows <br />into the sickle of a quarter moon, <br />its crisp sheen cold upon the throat. <br /> <br />Fear is unmasked in the witching wind <br />far from the pranks of tromping children <br />who dare, amid the leaves, to taunt <br />with old songs and a cut switch, <br />the stark, cobwebbed clapboards <br />of grave side ghosts <br />loosed upon the world, <br />to haunt this last slanted sheaf of corn, <br />stalked by the scythe <br />in the dread season of the harvest. <br /> <br />Even fire hides from the cold <br />in the skin of the gourd <br />on All Hallow's Eve, <br />its wind prying the brain’s stonehenge - <br />where death feared by the aging heart <br />close to the grave <br />becomes but a game <br />mimed by mischievious charades <br />of children, costumed <br />for their parade of life and death in the park. <br /><br />John Tansey<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/all-hallow-s-eve-2/
