Theme in Yellow / Carl Sandburg

from Fog and Fire

Theme in Yellow

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am joking.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Chicago Poems, 1916

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Carl Sandburg biography

Mirko S18, Jack-o'-lantern in Banovci, 2020. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

"Theme in Yellow" read by Zither P. Oxblood. Courtesy Graveyard Poetry.