Every year as October 31st approaches, I get this twitchy, itchy, witchy feeling, and I’m suddenly a mischievous kid again! (ok, ok…I’m like a mischievous kid every day, but Halloween is especially so!) Back when I was still a youngling of 17, I wrote this poem to try and capture that…feeling…that spiritual stirring that ignites a witch’s fires at this dark time of year. Perhaps you are feeling it, too? I hear the call once more…I am overtaken by the Spirit of Halloween!

Let the shenanigans commence!

Halloween Calling

Cold weather wets my memory,

makes me think I smell

bonfires and candy corn.

I dream of jack-o-lanterns

haunting me with their

yellow ocher grins,

and I wake knowing he’s been here,

slipped through the blinds,

casting the room in burnt sienna.

The pungency of roasting pumpkin

still hangs about my bed.

My first memory of autumn

is the hodgepodge PTA

Halloween festival,

where doorways

hung a crepe paper amber.

Face paint ran into collars

after apple bobbing and the

caramel coated atmosphere

sent spirits flying into the night,

on the cold hay ride

to the pumpkin patch in Potter’s field.

In the queer light of that orange October moon

I felt his summons and I followed.

This harvest he has found me again.

Ten years later and I am

still a fresh pumpkin to his calling.

I feel him in my dreams,

faceless, nameless,

he clips my stem, pulls off my crown

and carves the slopes and angles of my face

to his liking.

He breathes my sweet autumn odor,

knowing he has me,

and he’ll take me once again

into crisp nights

to do his bidding.