Pumpkins with faces, and a poem of mine from a while back...

 

All Hallows Eve

 

Kissed but not cut

by the combine, solitary cornstalks

rustle in wordless laments.

Crows bicker and feint,

 

sparring over slim leavings,

gathering seed in the cold.

Pumpkins guard our doorsteps,

lined up with precision,

 

or clustered in tight little groups,

barring any wayward shades.

Tendrils of cold seep

around sagging gray weather stripping, finding

 

warmth in the kitchen. Wool-wrapped,

we huddle around the fire,

ghost stories haunting the edges of conversation,

too real, too likely, to speak of.

 

Published in the Aurorean, Fall-Winter 2018