Haibun

                                        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.                 

                                            lightning flashes–

                                                 a shivering rumble
                                                         rolls through the crowd