It was one of those nights...

It was one of those nights:
My father took me by the hand
and we stared upon the absent Halloween lights,
with flickering glass bulbs and tinsel
contrasted against the starless horizon.
How I remember those nights,
when reality was a hovering mist
in a clear autumn morning.
And in the following afternoon,
there I was--buried among the auburn leaves,
with the crispy smell of winter
surfacing, breathing, gasping
in the veins of their aging skin.