A Prairie Halloween

As Indian summer gave way to the cold October moon I walked one Halloween night across glistening railroad tracks which eparated our little town from dusty roads and open land to Lodgepole Creek where autumn's chill blew golden leaves off shivering trees into Fort Sedgwick and as I followed my rustling companions hoping to find a ghost or two from he 7th Calvary or Sioux I heard their whispered sighs which made me turn and run for the safety of my prairie home where I was greeted by the smiling pumpkin that my dad had carved the night before and as that night fades into countless other nights my tears turned into stories that 'tell my children whenever ghosts or tumbleweeds knock on our door.

Shel Bockman is a professor at California State University, San Bernardino. He attended the University of Iowa years ago, where he took some poetry/creative writing courses but stopped writing poetry after receiving advanced degrees in a different field. But he has started writing poetry again, and has published poems in Locust Magazine, A Hudson View, SNReview, A Little Poetry, Boston Literary Magazine, Maverick, Flutter, Words-Myth, and Kupozine.