Title Unknown, Mary Selinski

Autumn colors

As the crocus colors early Springtime lilac, mauve, the alabaster of pure hope,

The pumpkin colors Autumn fiery orange (recollecting Summer's Sun),

In a palette with

Dried cornstalk, whose knifeblade leaves blow, brown and curled, across the highways,

November's gold chrysanthemum (Death's unlikely companion),

Red maple, and

The leaves of sweet gum trees, stars in every color of the rainbow

Except blue,

Which would remind you:

Winter will come soon,

Blanketing these colors' warmth

With cold, dead, bleached-bones white

Under a troubled mackerel sky

Of gray.

Thus, under the Corn Moon, Harvest, Hunter's Moon,

We carve pumpkins into lanterns,

To carve from growing darkness just enough light

For one exuberant dance

Before the Full Cold Moon's hibernal rest.

Thea Chesley