Halloween came and went and now
winter will be a comin’ in. Let us be
mindful of the hickory nuts to be gathered
in the sloping hills and leaves turned
red and yellow and the big darkening
walnuts falling to the ground
staining our fingertips as we
hammer off the husks and open
them to pick out and chew the inner
core so deep and delicious. Now
comes the time for setting rabbit
traps in the hills and checking them
in the early morning frost as smoke rises
curling out of chimneys like thoughts
of the old people no longer with us who
held us when we were young whispering
to us in the old tongue gently,
“Ich liebe dich, Ich liebe dich,”
making us feel good, welcoming us
into the world they were leaving.
Norbert Krapf, a native of Jasper, IN is a former Indiana Poet Laureate whose fifteenth poetry collection, Spirit Sister Dance, will appear in October and his Homecomings: A Writer’s Memoir, which covers the fifty plus years of his writing and publishing life, will appear next spring. He lives in downtown Indy not far from The Chatterbox Jazz Club and enjoys gardening and collaborating with musicians like jazz pianist-composer Monika Herzig and bluesman Gordon Bonham and dialect poet and playwright Helmut Haberkamm from his ancestral Franconia.