Jack O’ the Lantern



Jack O’ the Lantern

Was wilder in his youth

When he haunted a harvest night,

Posing his trickster shadow

Over ripened fields,

Or stealing the odd gate or post

From a white picket fence

To sneak a look

Through cottage window.

The wisp

With the crude, half-mooning grin

And the tricornered eyes

Has passed to myth.

 

The sticks and stones and stories

Tamed his light;

 

A wick burns low

Within a globe of skin.