Even now this landscape is assembling.The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.
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All Hallows by Louise Glück is a lovely descriptive poem in which the poet subtly cultivates a sense of foreboding before landing itself in Ghostville. The "fields picked clean", wheat is "bound", the moon has teeth even. A hand is offered in payment in the second stanza to which a soul emerges from a tree, ostensibly to take that offering—but to what end? Dun-dun-DUNNNNN. Have a great Halloween everyone!
Potential Writing Exercise: Write a descriptive piece set in the deep fall (not long before winter) which involves only one character being witnessed by your omniscient writer doing one thing near the end of your piece. Build up your atmosphere with words which are often used in violence or to describe morbid/violent/deathly things or events, even if (and especially if) the thing being described is not a dark one at all.
