Halloween

For one bitter cold October night
a fog rolled from the sea.
Two strangers stalked the mist,
and crashed into their fantasies.

Fate, or fear, or fear of fate,
tore loneliness from their hearts,
for one desperate impassioned act,
committed in costume on Halloween.

Afterward, they pulled out a pack of cigarettes,
struck the tips from the very last arid match they had.
Drawing in a breath, which blew all their courage out,
they watched the glowing embers 
turn to ash and hit the ground.

-dp-
6-14-84

PUBLISHED: Scrypic 1.4
and Scryptic Best of 2017-18 Anthology
March 2018
 


(on or about the year 2000 this poem was transformed into a song of the same name and rendered in two versions, solo with guitar and solo with piano, by band mate Andrew Patcheck.  Both versions charted in the top 20 in there categories on the SOUNDCLICK, the Artists Music Community website.  The piano version earned a top 100 notation for its performance among the tens of thousands of songs on the site.)  

 http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11017232