Pamela Sumners
Halloween
Hang October's black wreath on the door
For the lover who will knock no more
For the partner in this danse macabre
For graves this city wind will rob.
Gossip's white sheets will flap their boast
That beyond this door lies summer's ghost.
Neighbors injudicious at the curb
Will cluck and chuckle and observe
Furtive goings-in, private comings-out
And feast on tricksters of our doubt.
But we two know all of autumn's guile
Set in the jack-o-lantern's smile.
October, love, the thing that parts
Hobgoblins of our too-small hearts.
Bio
Pamela Sumners is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer who loves poems, her wife, her trans son, and three gassy dogs.