>> Now, last night was Halloween and the only person that came to our door to ask
for trick-or-treat was one little chubby girl that claimed that she was the bride of Dracula.
And I just got to thinking that Halloween is not what it was --
Not what it used to be when I was a kid.
It seems somehow that they've taken the magic out of it.
It seems also too that somehow they've taken the darkness out of it.
I can remember long ago you'd be walking alone at night,
maybe running hardly any street lights, maybe your neighborhood completely dark
or maybe you were, you know, blocks and blocks away from your own house
and be stuffing yourself out of a paper bag full of heaven knows what, not even looking,
just gobbling it down and running along.
But things aren't like that anymore, you know?
Here is the kid in his non-flammable costume, in his light-colored materials
and when it gets home, he's not allowed to eat it before he gets home.
When he gets home, there he is with the parents at the dinner table with strong lights,
looking for razor blades and needles.
So it made me think back to when I was a kid and we used to play hide
and seek out, late at night, hours, hours.
Maybe we'd play until one, two in the morning.
And it was a unique experience to be out there alone in the dark.
And I have one poem that I'd like to start with that's about that kind of thing.
If you can think back with me to when you were very small and you'd hide yourself so well
that--you wanted to hide yourself so well because you were afraid somebody would find you.
Then, after you'd been out there hidden so well long enough,
you were afraid that nobody was going to find you and it's kind of a eerie experience.
This poem stems from that kind of play at night long ago and it's called Seek.
We were all colors living there, Bermuda struggling to green up.
Pastel boxes, none of them big, barefoot and brown, my brother would let me leap
up on his hand, then flip me over and upright, metal of gleam above his belly,
a gain in the yellow porch light.
My dad would stand me in his hand to raise me stiff above the roof,
a ritual since my knees could lock.
But at night, before the fences, hunched in the cool dark you'd hide and hope
that no one would find you too soon.
Shadows would raise the hairs on your thin arms as you crouched and waited for the anger,
for the loss one small house portended.
For the time when no large hand could hold you up right, no toss right you.
The years when no one could find you in these brass lamps, bright light,
looking back for a small, brown body, ready, flat chested, bug-eyed in the dark.