Where The Graveyard Ends

Crackle crackle snap goes the twigs beneath the leaves, a blissful fog surrounds me in a supple autumn breeze.

I smell the scent of smoky embers from a fire burning faint and the mildew on the tombstones of the sinner and the saint.

An owl, atop a branch of a sturdy ancient oak, let’s out a haunting coo that sends shivers up my cloak.

I close my eyes and cling to the crispness of the air, one boot before the other as I pay my passage fare.

The toll that I must pay is no currency of old, it’s belief in the mysterious alleged and untold.

I travel now a path that’s wrapped in orange and gold and red. Mausoleums and dark courtyards flash grimly through my head.

I stop beneath a shade tree covered thick in swampy moss, the dew-dipped branches trap me and again I’m at a loss.

Like a kaleidoscope of prisms, my mind paints me a tale. I’ll tell you what it was about, hark ye, stop and hail.

I see a phantom dancing with a small coven of witches. There’s a haunting clown with bloodshot eyes, I chose to name him Stitches.

A masked figure who alludes me drags a shovel through the grass, and a frail black cat paws across a fence line made of brass.

In the distance up ahead there’s a pumpkin shining bright, its expression is perplexing in the stillness of the night.

Perhaps, like me, he too is lost and doesn’t know his way. But just like that, he’s gone again beneath a stack of hay.

The hay is rich and earthy like a barnyard in the spring. But spring is gone, it’s autumn now, the bluebirds do not sing.

Instead the hoot owls coo and the chilly air it blows, in a whirlwind of the stories that everybody knows.

I see twinkle lights inside my head that cast a glow inside my mind. It illuminates those hiding, the shy and freaky kind.

October is their favorite, it’s the time they come to play. The monsters, ghosts and psychos, for just one month they stay.

Some call them spooky, some say weird, some say they’re rather strange. The figures that escape this month can cause the world derange.

Embrace it, drink the Kool-Aid, take the potion from their basket. For you can leave November 1st, but for them it’s to a casket.

The moon glows white behind the clouds, its fullness pulls me in. I stop beside a headstone, “Here lies Thatcher, Finn.”

It says he loved the summer – fishing, hiking, rowing boats. I scoff and keep on walking, give me cider, crypts and moats.

My path, the one that’s gravel, covered in vibrant autumn leaves, it takes me to the end where one no longer grieves.

I turn around and finally look at the path I’ve traveled on, the haunted horror-laced pictures are inevitably gone.

There’s no full moon, no witch, no clown, they’ve vanished all the same. I laugh and suppose that others might just call me insane.

One thing remains, this much is true, the colors and the air. The scent and feel of autumn followed me through the despair.

I paid my toll, my passage fare, hark! Listen once again. Do not mistake this tale for one of corruption or of sin.

I turn to leave the pathway that has taken me thus far for now, I pause for but a moment more to stop and wonder how?

How does it work, the magic that seems to come this time of year? The imagination of the odd, all the carnage and the fear?

For now, I turn to leave this place, so long, goodbye my friends. Meet me here October next, right where the graveyard ends.