Brush fires gleam. The nuts are falling for the frost. The small boy comes home twice his regular size through his breeches. The butternuts take hours to get out whole, but the beechnuts come out easy from their triangles of brown. The beans are stacked for the threshing. The popcorn is hung up braided by its husks for a winter's feasting.
Water's frozen in the pail, Heap the corncrib, swing the flail!
The fall plowing opens the land to the healing of frost, the days grow solemn still, smoke stands straight up to heaven. Little pools wrinkle with thin ice of a morning.
The small boy sets his traps now, an he reeks of skunk when he sits by the hot stove at school. The teacher sends the boys out to drive the skunk away from the schoolhouse. The bees fall quiet in the hive. The boy carries a pumpkin almost as large as he is through the hazel dusk, he puts a head all fiery eyes at the window of the Molasses Girl. She shrieks, but she comes out smiling an takes the boy in to a loaf of spice gingerbread. Little ghosts in short pants and Mother's sheets troop the spruces with jack-o'-lanterns grinning with triangular teeth and square eyes. The ol man shivers in his lean coat, for more than the cold. He brings home the last ear of corn the gleaners missed in the gloaming.
It is October, and the harvest house and home.
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