Theme in Red

With credit to The Crucible, Carl Sandburg’s “Theme in Yellow,” and the 2015 film The Witch, here is my creepy Halloween poem:

 

Theme in Red

 

I stalk the fallen leaves

With reddish work at night.

I light the eerie mist,

Sulfuric in my intent

And I am called Old Scratch.

On the last of October

With the scrim of dusk hoisted

Upon us

Children clamp and cower,

Me circling around them,

Offering plaintive pleas

And love to the sullen moon;

I am a hoofed beast

With feral teeth

And the children know

I am not fooling.

 

“Dost thou wish to live deliciously?”