dream of the wind

some years we run screaming through the darkness

laugh out loud all our fears for the world to hear

let it all hang out, watch the movies, eat the candy

take the haunted hayride through the fields

our ancestors died tending, to feed other mouths

tell the stories of languages we don’t speak anymore

or ones we do, but only barely, haltingly,

with stuttering tongues,

run through the woods stopping our ears

and ignoring the sound of our own names

resounding off the hills back to us

and some years, like this year,

we say nothing at all,

let the wind do the speaking,

still our tongues

and listen for not screams

but whispers,

hope for anything at all that

could make sense of

what is left to us here and now

trust the rustle of fallen leaf

to carry that wisdom of ages

(and it doesn’t, maybe the sugar rush

will make sense of it all)