It's Halloween

Someone requested a Halloween poem and I realized I have never written a single one,

partly because Halloween in rural Ontario is a little quieter than town-Halloween.

We didn't go trick-or-treating as youngsters but sometimes we would sneak up to the attic and take clothes from mother's 'younger days box', stuff pillows into dresses til they fit, find funny hats and shoes, then we would knock at our own door and see if we could trick them into a treat...
or we would dash about the yard scaring siblings because everything seemed so deliciously-spooky!

 There was always a few neighbors who came in their costumes and I think we were almost as excited to see them as they were to 'be' them:)

I still remember staring at a boy who we played with all the time
but he was wearing a sad clown mask and laughing under it oh, how I hated it!!

I have approx. 10 treat bags ready just in case because my kids from daycare sometimes come.

The trees that laughed all afternoon moan, menacing and black

They claw the air where wide-eyed witches venture through the towns

Consorting with strange creatures each sporting a pail or sack

Fairies, black cats and princesses, robots, jail-birds and clowns

Mickey Mouse with a lady-bug, a vampire and a cow

Pumpkins with feet, a skeleton, gorillas, monsters, oh

Their quest for treats makes streets not quite as sinister somehow

While along jack-o-lanterened walks, white ghosts and goblins go

Wild shadows leap and lunge, toss trees, they screech and scratch and wail

Or so it seems; the wind, it screams and gives us good goose-bumps

Where dry leaves rattle like the bones of summer up for sale

The whole world is a haunted house full of hisses and thumps

…and it would be too scary to knock and say ‘trick or treat’  

(But mom or dad stands not too far away with watchful eye)

And soon flat sacks grow fat with loot sticky, salty and sweet

While overhead a host of phantom ghosts and witches fly

© Janet Martin