Halloween

By Lindsay Turner

Some yellow sunflowers open down the street,

A ladder is open beneath someone’s apple tree.

Beneath a dead sky the contours are flattened.

So the land of the dead is closer today.

The land of the dead, they say, is closer.

But what if my lot lies with the living?

Out in the yard a long-billed bird eats something from dust.

Its throat has a dark patch in the shape of a smile

But full, as if its throat had been slit open.

But look, the bird is still pecking and alive.

Elsewhere, a sports game, ropes of rain come down and open the earth.

Here it’s so dry they’d just roll off the dust.

But what if my loves, like the bird, are living?

What if my loves, like the bird, are living for now?

Most of the apples have already fallen.

The sunflowers turn into dusty spiked balls.

But what if my land is the land of the living?

The bird from the dust takes flight

Then turns multiple—

A handful of birds rising in the dead sky

Opened to receive them. 

But my loves for now are here and living, and I want more of them.

Like the bird on the ground I pick what I need from the dust.