by Cliff Saunders
All around the neighborhood,
costumed children are hiding
from the walking dead
under autumn’s dusky trees.
On this sweet holiday,
fingernails are touchy,
and the sky is more sinister
than blood on a ghost.
The Halloween basket
of fire that has gone dark
on a hillside continues
to smolder. How sanguine it is!
Nearby, owls devour a pumpkin,
and Dracula’s castle triggers
seismic activity as a black cat
approaches on six legs.
Hide the goats, hide the goats,
for a harvest moon illumines
cornstalks of the lowlands,
a moon that is pink all over.
At the mercy of the wind,
every stairwell begs
for a sharp knife. No bat
prowls in the belly of twilight.
Scarecrows endure even
when the darkling field
does them no favors
and even better makes them
sing and dazzles them
as redemption erupts
all around them, as a meteor
explodes into another tirade.
Parts of skeletons lie exposed
on unmarked graves,
and gusty winds probe
a witch’s broom for magic.
Softly, a spirit recovering
from burns plays violin
on the edge of a good night’s
sleep, while a white spider
crawling on the stoop
of an unlit porch
has the time of its afterlife,
where truth is a slippery thing.
At last, enthusiasm collides
with bedtime, even as cobwebs
dangling from a birch limb
brace for a brutal winter.
About the Author:
Cliff Saunders is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including Mapping the Asphalt Meadows (Slipstream Publications) and The Persistence of Desire (Kindred Spirit Press). His poems have appeared recently in Quadrant, The Rockford Review, Exacting Clam, Concision Poetry Journal, ArLiJo, and Cigarette Fire.