September The Twenty-Fourth

QUEST for the Young Witch, Autumn

I searched for autumn everywhere!
On the misty river road, along the smoky ridge,
Among the bright redhaws, under a bridge
Where startled mallards rose in the copper-colored air.

Hot as a hound I ran among the corn
Where pumpkins lay in orange-red profusion.
Her tracks ran here, ran there; in confusion
I plunged after her into a thicket of thorn.

I heard her mockery in the yellow noon.
Bewitched, I shouted her name at echoing rocks.
Beneath lemon-colored maples and maples red as a fox
I sought her, in valleys haunted by the moon.

I said: She is nothing --- wind in the empty husk.
She is dead. She never lived. She is evaporated water.
Then, on my own street, I saw her (or her daughter)
Carying a Jack-o'-lantern in the bonfire dusk.

-- THOMAS W. DUNCAN