That’s right, Chickens, Halloween is upon us. The day each year when it’s fun to be afraid because our fears are fantasies.

My son gave me the ‘REALLY?!?!’ face when I asked him to consider staying home with his family for the holiday.

Family??Holiday???? (cue→face)

But we need to, right? Use every opportunity for community – at home, at work, at school. Day-to-day can be scary. Life can be a real Frankenstein. So let’s claim Halloween as a day to have fun with some fear-fiction, high-fructose-corn-syrup-induced flights of fancy, and good ole’-fashioned playin’ make-believe.

Northern is a spirited community and All Hallow’s Eve festivities abound…be sure to take a few minutes out of your monster-schedule to tune-in and walkabout…it’s hard to know what specters may be seen!

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My Halloween treat (trick?) for you (in addition to the awesome Door Prizes we’re giving away in the ASC today)...a poem (no – it isn’t Poe).

A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula, Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through the kitchen window at a raccoon perched outside on a picnic table where it picks

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over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte. Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

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Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce, “What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count

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whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,

and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one

the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”

“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”

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Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt

and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,

wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.

Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

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and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on

the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs

abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room

turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

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The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”

the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.

The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.

We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.