Soon I will slip into the time of apples

and costumed creatures gathering under street lamps

counting the spoils of twilight’s bounty.

Damp dirt roads that lead to strange cottages

where dark doorways alight by the flame-spirit

of tallow candles and spectral visions.

Where I can fold myself into a dank mist

that welcomes me back like a cozy sweater,

lost and then found.

The leaf-children will dance about me

and sing lullabies of olde

in the language of the sleeping trees—

They will twist

and writhe,

tremble

and shake,

lead me down—

down beneath the pumpkin patch.

The town above will suffer the sweetness

of popcorn balls and candy corn,

the heaviness of never knowing just where—

And every year my father,

with his tired eyes and leathered skin,

will pluck a gourd from the coiled vine

that grows beyond the village hedge—

to carve my likeness into its shriveled rind

and set it out upon the wooden steps—

a curious effigy to grief and sorrow,

keeping careful watch as children play.

For just as the hearth-fires of autumn retire

and the moon turns away from a dreaming world,

the wind will catch on that brown, withered mouth,

whispering my name like a dirge in the night,

dragging me back through the mist and the earth,

down through the years, calling me home.