Glows.

JACK O' LANTERN

Candle, spoon, and carving knife:

nearing the vigil of the dead,

let’s impose a little life

upon a ripening, faceless head.

Slice and pry the handled top,

Shovel out the mush and seeds,

Cut -- before we hear the clop,

Coming too close, of chalky steeds.

Two triangles make the classic eyes

Another makes a classic nose;

Three teeth, square and oversize,

Complete a countenance that glows

all night by its captive wick,

its parody of intellect.

Idle amusement for the quick.

And yet the venturous dead are checked:

shades of traitors that are given

one night's leave of Satan's jaws;

throngs of warlocks; wild unshriven

things with lammergeyer claws;

bogies by the wild heavens abhorred

witness their own defective will

when they flee this grinning gourd

presiding on our window sill.

Of whom or what an effigy,

that is for itself to know

until All Hallows' turn us free

to lift the cranial lid and blow.

Robert B. Shaw