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Oh, The Life of a Pumpkin
Oh, the life of a pumpkin
Which came first, the seed or the pumpkin?
Or the pumpkin or the seed?
The seed placed gently in the warm rich earth
With just the right amount of rain and sunshine
To grow, to send out it’s runners or vines
To flower, to set forth the fruit of the seed
To grow into a small, medium or large round grooved pumpkin
To be the one “special” pumpkin your father took you to be
picked by the one lucky girl or boy
As you carve your favorite pumpkin that you picked out
Amongst all the others.
To be cut into a Jack-O-Lantern and made alive
As you cut the top off, the stem becomes the handle
To lift it off so you can light up his scary face
And to have his stringy guts and hundreds of seeds ripped out
of its insides.
A face with its crooked smile, eyes and few teeth carved into
the tough, thick golden orange skin
To sit on a porch on Allhallows Day or Halloween with a candle
Inside to light up his scary face.
As he sits on the edge of the porch with its lit face
greeting, welcoming all the witches, goblins and ghosts
The come in packs in the dark of the early evening
They hold out their goodie bag saying in unison;
Trick or Treat!
The Jack-O-Lantern has done a wonderful job
And now in a few weeks his face will cave, buckle, shrivel and wrinkle.
His insides will be rotting, decaying and have this black moldy
stuff growing in its insides.
Then to be taken away, to be thrown into a heap of decaying
matter to nourish the garden in the spring.
Now, the life of a pumpkin is complete!
By Faye Hart
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