As I wait for the traffic light to change on the corner of Broadway and 48th Street NE, I look beyond the negative rhetoric of the campaign signs to the bright orange ribbed squash scattered on the hillside. I try to calculate the number of pumpkin pies still awaiting harvest and think of Carl Sandburg. Then the light changes. I turn left and, once home, I pull a can of Libby’s, Libby’s Libby’s on the label, label, label from the round corner lazy Susan.
Theme in Yellow I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs And love to the harvest moon; I am a jack-o’-lantern With terrible teeth And children know I am fooling.
Credits:
Bibliographic: © Carl Sandburg, Theme in Yellow, from Chicago Poems. New York: Henry Colt and Company, 1916.
Photo: Pexels, lure_of_adventure
