A PUMPKIN PATCH
A cold, rainy night. The gardens and meadows of an historic
house are covered with carved pumpkins. Each glowing with a flickering candle,
each unique, from menacing to beautiful.
Tiffany stained glass, skeletal hands, skulls, faces of the famous, a
garden of bugs and birds, boats, animals, the moon, a sea bed of fish, abstract
art.
Three thousand pumpkins. The setting up, nightly candle
lighting and the cleaning up when the display is over, done by volunteers.
Nearly as many visitors
as pumpkins. Noisy, but orderly. We follow a path snaking through and around
the displays, umbrellas up, trying to keep dry and not poke the person in front
of us. My head spins. Left, right, up to the house top, along a
raised bank. A pirate ship, a witch, Frankenstein, Dracula.
rolls through the crowd
