October 25: By the Pricking of My Thumbs...

Something wicked this way comes...

Tonight, my book club meets to discuss Shadow Show.  It is a perfect night to commune with Ray Bradbury, rain and fog and thunder.  In some ways, I feel like I've been peaking into the tents of Mr. Dark's carnival, seeing sea monsters and ghosts and disembodied heads.  I am a child again, sneaking into the adult section of the library to peer into books about Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.  Yes, Frankenstein and Dracula are coming to dinner tonight at my house.

To accompany these guests, we will have soup and warm bread and rolls.  I can't think of a better way to spend a late October evening.  While the fallen maple leaves become slick and cold outside, inside we will huddle together and whisper about the secrets of the Dark carnival.  The pumpkins are grinning on front porches.  Orange lights festoon windows.  And, on the television, screams and howls.

All Hallow's Eve is upon us.  Halloween time.  Bradbury time.

Saint Marty is ready to jump on the carousel.

October 31: Happy All Hallows Eve, Changing the Seasons

All Hallows Eve in upon us. 

Last night, when I got home, my daughter realized she didn't have the tights or shoes for her Little Red Riding Hood costume.  Thus ensued an hour of frenzied searching.  Tears (my daughter's).  Sobs (my daughter's again).  A desperation trip to the local Shopko to purchase a new pair of shoes (my sister made this Hail Mary pass).  Shopko wasn't open.  By this time, my daughter was in the shower, muttering to herself about how her life was ruined.  My wife was planning a trip to Shopko this morning to pick up some footwear that was appropriate and wouldn't induce blisters when the phone rang.

"I found them," my sister said, sounding sheepish.

"Where?" I yelled over my daughter's weeping in the bathroom.

"In my bedroom, where I was keeping the costume," my sister said.  "Sorry, I should have looked closer."

I said a silent prayer of thanks to Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost things.  I'd just shot him a quick plea a few minutes before, something along the lines of Please save me from spending another thirty bucks on shoes, Tony.  "Great," I said to my sister.  "Thanks for calling."  I hung up and went to give the news to my daughter, who was washing her hair and planning to change her name and move to Zaire so she wouldn't have to wear tennis shoes to her Halloween party at school.

This morning, when I got to work, I took down the Halloween decorations and put up the Thanksgiving decorations.  Bye bye, jack-o-lanterns.  Hello, turkeys.  This changing of the seasons may seem premature to some of you.  It won't be the first time I've done something prematurely.  (Yes, that was intended to be a rather inappropirate double entendre.)  However, I like being ahead of the game.  I feel like I've just accomplished the first task of the holiday season.  Last night, I got the name of the person from my family for whom I'm supposed to get a Christmas present.

The holly and ivy are on the way!

Marty, patron saint of prematurity.

Speaking of being premature...

October 10: Son, New Poem, Daughter's Costumes

I don't have much time to post tonight.  You see, my three-year-old son is with me.  I wasn't counting on that.  My wife was supposed to be watching him, but she's at church.  He was supposed to be with her, but he wasn't really cooperating with the church ladies.  Therefore, I'm at my desk, trying to keep an eye on him and post something witty.  It's not working too well for me.  In fact, he almost pulled an entire file down on himself just now.  Seriously.

I have a new poem for you.  The poem is really the only reason I wanted to do this post tonight.  It's the first poem I've written in a while that I haven't struggled with.  It was inspired by the fact that my daughter has decided to change her Halloween costume about ten times in the last three days.  And it's inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses.  Halloween.  Mythology.  My daughter.  Those are the ingredients.

Okay, Saint Marty has to go stop his son from setting the office on fire.

Metamorphoses

I want to speak about bodies

Changed into new forms. 

My daughter, ten, on the verge

Of petal, stigma, ovule, sepal,

Talks of All Hallows Eve, the form

She will assume when Selene

Rises into the starry heavens.

Talks of the living dead, hunger

For the taste of flesh, of body.

Then changes her mind.

She will be straw in cornfield,

Blight against crow feather.

Then she chooses

A fairy nymph of cobweb,

Draped in lace and silk,

Arachne’s fine handiwork,

Fat with flies and moth wing.

Her muse shifts yet again.

She will be spell caster.

Pointed hat, frog skin,

Green and marbled with the dark

Matter of the universe.  And now,

Her final mutation, she will be

A girl, red-cloaked, a penchant

For forest and hairy stranger

In her young breast.  I fear

This form most.  Fear she won’t

Want to morph back on All Soul’s Day.

Fear she will just keep changing

States.  Liquid.  Solid.  Vapor.

Until she drifts away from me,

Or becomes some creature I don’t know

How to love.

1 From A. S. Kline’s translation of Book One of Ovid’s Metamorphoses

This just might be my daughter on Halloween