I’ve written a prose-poem. That’s not exactly new, since I’ve done that before. But today I’m seized by the impulse to share it. I’ve been toying with the idea of posting some of my more creative/adventurous work on this blog, so I thought I’d go with it. I just wrote the poem today, and I’ll probably hate it tomorrow, but now it will live forever.

What do you think?

It is Halloween
Ghosts and monsters wait
Around corners once familiar

The here and the gone commingle
Memories rise like the dead

Behind one green tree looms a red one
Like shades
Past and present

The tree will drop dead leaves
Spattering the lawn with drops of blood
Russet against green
By spring, they will blend together
New rising from old

Around the corner, always,
There is death
And around that corner is life again

I remember the day Josh showed off his socks
for Halloween, bright orange
Hunter-orange
Inmate-orange

The next day
A man driving by
Saw Josh’s shoes in the road
And stopped his car by the ditch
(Unlike the man the night before.)

I wonder
What the man saw first
Did the bright socks
Draw him to the body?