Halloween

Dad sent me this poem last year and I liked it.  (If you have little people who can read looking over your shoulder, it has a few bad words).  It's a special Mama kind of terrifying.

Halloween

Her face, blood-streaked, is no longer my daughter's.
She'll wear no lace this year, no tiaras, no bows.
She bobs, fangs bared, through the thin skin of water.
She's bitten the apple.  Triumphant, she goes
to collect her prizes.  And I'm left to remember
my own father sewing, under my collar,
a blood-stained cape.  His warning, like thunder,
still rings in my ears.  With each stitch he'd holler
Beware the God-damned sons' a' bitches
with their poisons and candy bait.  Now I wait
for my daughter, who has entered a night full of witches.
Gone, before I could kiss her goodnight,
and the doorbell keeps singing:  too late, too late.
Even the full moon is missing a bite.

Richard Michelson