Who's There? An All Hallow's Eve Poem

 

The sky hangs low as a chill wind blows the clouds

to scour and scrub the tops of trees,

raking leaves to dampened ground to carpet brown and rust and red;

Beneath the loam the dead stir and shiver as autumn hovers

in sheets of rain and ice that coat each stone and glistening bone 

in drapery so pale and fine;

as spiders weave their webs and daylight ebbs the spirits rise
and seek the heat of fire and hearth, tapping at the windowglass
with cracking nails and fingers frail while inside
we huddle, backs to walls; our voices call in faint surprise,
"Who's there? Who's there?" And silence is the one reply
but still we call, and still they crawl about our eaves and sills,
and listen to our ghostly tales,  and sing a mournful wail
lost in the sighing of the wind and weeping of the dead.


Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.