All week scavenging
for hazelnuts; plump gourds small enough
to pin to my black clothes;
fake grapes to drape my hair
and gemlike stud my pipecleaner ring;
woolly yarn—symbolic lamb—to string
crab apples big as peas round neck and wrist;
vines and crickets to run
up and down my calves; and
a tiny felt bird to sew to my shoulder near
the last of the cut flowers and dead bees
culled from the bright flames of leaves I fix to my sleeves.
People guess I’m Autumn, or a nymph.

Keats was born on Halloween, I tell
the fortune-teller who’s anxious about her future,
and the farmer who sighs and hands me a glass of champagne;
while the grand reaper stands aloof
watching from under
an unreadable mask.
Think of Keats pressing
the last gleaming drops of his life
into his poem, gleaning
the harvest blessings, not knowing
how few seasons lay ahead, only one
fallow autumn
before his life was scythed.

On this “holiday—or holinight” (his words),
partying among witches, devils, ghouls,
dressed as this poem, which
no one seems to know,
I haven’t done Keats justice.
So in my back pocket I’ve stashed
handouts—photocopies of it:
The tax auditor
looks me up and down and up
between the lines,
which he reads
like a checklist of commodities.


© 2006 by Laura Glenn. All rights reserved.