Hurricane Sandy Serenade – Part Three
Haibun Poem
October 31st
“Frankie says it’s the worst Halloween ever.”
“Why?”
“No pumpkin to carve, no trick-or-treating.”
I look at my mother. “Why can’t he tell me himself?”
We pull up to Secor Farms later the same morning. He strides through the aisles between pumpkin-laden tables. Until he finds the perfect one.
Then we stop at the crowded Suffern Library. Every seat close to an outlet in the café has already been taken. The crowd checks email, Facebook and any other site using tablets, laptops and phones that are still plugged in.
We carve his pumpkin after returning home. He has his Jack-o’-Lantern. But trick-or-treating appears to be out. The Knolls, where we have gone the last several years, still has no power. Then Mira learns that the Bon Air Condo community does.
He hits unit after unit, townhouse after townhouse. He’s not alone: the crowds we usually see at the Knolls have discovered Bon Air, too. We soon run into the Murphy family. And our son, who only this morning told his grandma he was having the worst Halloween ever, runs with his friends to even more units, shouting, “More houses! More candy!”
Halloween
leaving behind an unlit
Jack-o’-Lantern
previous: Hurricane Sandy Serenade, Part Two
more by FRANK J. TASSONE
photograph by Aaron Burden
