No common autumn phantoms, nor the pale
Drab denizens of winter walk tonight
Beneath rain-shrouded skies. The moon's drowned light
Reveals them almost human in details
Of dress & hair: no rags, no matted manes
Combed sparse by time. Their footsteps, from the sound,
Have bypassed heaven & assault the ground
With force akin to flesh. Akin to pain.

Moist April raises revenants like weeds
Choking unquiet ground, unhallowed graves,
Until truth shrieks aloud -- or in the minds
Of those who seek to leave some past behind,
Forgetting springtime's providence which saves
Green evidence within each secret seed.

Author Bio

Ann K. Schwader is an active member of both SFWA and HWA. Her new chapbook of horror & dark SF verse, Architectures of Night, is available now from Dark Regions Press. Strange Stars & Alien Shadows, her first dark fiction collection, will be published in eBook & POD versions this fall by Lindisfarne Press.

Check out Ms. Scwader's dark fiction and sample stories.

Other poems by Ms. Schwader

In the Canyon Lands
For All the Starlost
Deep Sky Desert
In Darker Skies of Mind
Markian 348
You Know They're Watching

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• Read Born Under a Blood Moon Sky - a poem.