Cigar Store Indian

My father grabbed a blanket

in cooler night weather and sat

wrapped in a Hudson Bay smoking

on the screened-in porch

I curled up next to this being

who could smell approaching rain

and took shelter in his silence -

well-pleased to be his papoose

A song from my show

COSTUMES - the musical

Oct 21-23, 2010
*

Lily sings the song to her great aunt, Jasmine Bradley, a woman known for having once sewn the most frightening costumes the town had ever seen. Forty years later, Lily and her friend Tom hope Aunt Jazz still has those costumes in a steamer trunk in her attic.

I Need A Costume

I need a costume for Hallowe'en night
Nothing I have in my closet is right
Nothing will do that I already own
I need a costume that you have sewn

A costume that's creepy, peculiar and quite

Mysterious, ghastly or strange

One I can wear to the party tonight

To scare all my friends for a change

I need a costume for Hallowe'en night

Nothing I have in my closet is right

Nothing will do that I already own

I need a costume that you have sewn

A costume that's spooky and chilling or quite

In ghoulish high fashion or cool

One I can wear to the party tonight
So nobody thinks me a fool

No silly kid costumes now that I'm grown

I need a costume that you have sewn

All my old costumes are fitting too tight

I need a new one this Hallowe'en night

*

Copyright 2004 by Stephanie Colburn

Autumn

A yellow leaf
floated downward
from the summer sky -
a scout
before the storm.

I wrote my poem in 1974.

In a comic strip in today's (October 8, 2010) TULSA WORLD, "Red & Rover" are sitting under a tree watching a leaf fall. Red says, "Look, an advance scout." Rover muses, "Advance scout??" Hidden beneath a pile of leaves, Red says, "Yep."

I clicked the photo in October 1996 in Humbird, Wisconsin.