Pumpkin Patch

by Russell Rowland

What more inscrutable, than a field
of pumpkins waiting to be harvested?
We survey the expressionless orange
beheadings; imagine what they think.

It’s not unlike encountering in town
strangers behind sunglasses—heads
without eyes communicate nothing;
reflect you darkly in double mirrors.

Such opacities may conceal celebrity,
calling-hour ululation, dilated pupils,
or just two clueless question-marks
in the empty space between earlobes.

Who among us needs reminders of
agents ever absent from their desks,
a spouse whose face gives little out,
cosmetic deadpans in open caskets?

We will take up our paring knives
to whittle personality into the rind,
make two pumpkins fit helpmeets:
male smiling, female smiling back.

These shall impersonate us before
an entire costumed neighborhood
who envy our happiness, while we
tuck the reality behind our masks.