When I was a boy there was no Halloween.
We knocked on doors for a ‘Penny for the Guy’
to buy bangers and rockets
and set them off where we liked,
young boys running amok
along twilight roads
through those endless stubble fields
under watching skies.
But then someone opened that box
and the spirits escaped;
the warped tales of our history
replaced by phantoms of trick and treat –
in an age of deceit.

copyright Francis Barker 2019