Scarecrow’s Harvest
written by: Christina Ciufo
On All Hallows’ Eve night,
at a decrypted, colonial farm,
stalks of wheat oscillate
side to side, entranced
by the Harvest Moon’s
auburn-marigold moonlight.
A murder of crows,
like shadows, fly over
the field and a crooked post,
cawing their sepulchral serenade.
Gelid wind clamors
into the wheat’s ears.
Wheat rustles –
a scarecrow,
phlegm, inauspicious,
and unsettling, wearing
a tattered, orange-ebony plaid shirt
and dark blue jeans, appears,
carrying his scythe on his shoulders.
His straw hands as rough
as a tree branch, grasping
onto the handles, lowering
the scythe’s crescent,
silver head to the ground.
Its silver head gleams –
reflecting the scarecrow’s
impious, ghoulish grin,
and his unsettling, ebony-brown eyes,
bathed in the ardent, auburn-marigold moonlight.
He pugnaciously sways
the scythe side to side,
towards the wheat –
their thin, earthly, gold
stems caressing against
the scythe’s gelid, silver head.
Swishing,
swishing,
swishing.
The scarecrow says in a calm,
ghoulish, melodious voice,
“Harvest Moon conjuring
the wheat from the soil
with your auburn moonlight,
like a bonfire’s ambers
while the ghosts’ shriek echoes
and the crows, in a choir, continue
your blasphemous serenade
sung by my fellow brethren long ago.
Serenade for me, the boogeyman,
while sowing the spirits, like wheat,
in this accursed field, for the All Hallows’ Eve Harvest.”
The Jack-O-Lanterns
hear and ghoulishly grin
to his spine-chilling song
from across the field,
sitting on the fence posts.
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