Late afternoon this last October day

Good parents out bedizening front yards

With tombstones, webs, and severed smirking skulls

Articulated skeletons as well

Their bony forms half-buried — fleshless fingers

Supplicate, protrude, pale yearning from dark earth

Hags drawn in silhouette, well warted out

Curved nose meets upturned chin, nutcrackering

Topped off with pointy jet-black witches' hats

And pumpkins too, of course, some carved, some not

Some coquelicot, some luteous

A precious few in greens or ghostly white

But most still the well-known classics, orange orbs

So far, so norm, the usual displays

But one thing novel and of note

New sellout at the hardware stores

House after house, porch after porch

Gate after gate, stair upon stair

Up and down these leaf-strewn autumn streets

So many homes this year look just the same

Aglow with miles of brilliant yellow tape

Emblazoned with black slashes and black words

Caution danger keep out warning do not enter

CAUTION! DANGER! KEEP OUT! WARNING! DO NOT ENTER!

Or, sometimes, just one black-on-yellow word

Emergency emergency emergency

EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!

Startling, a bit, but seems to be on trend

The violent crime scene vibe — feels odd at first

Still, almost every house has got the look

Wrapped snug around in brilliant yellow tape

So — now that's normal, parents working hard

Earnest, jolly, keen or grumpy, busy

Weaving tape across their outdoor entryways

Crisscrossing their front staircases and gates

A cunning compromise, two-for-one fun-pun

To make it scary-festive AND to make it clear —

Do NOT approach our brightly decked-out door!

Peruse our caution warning danger tape

You and your vile droplets? NOT welcome here

Big signs up too, bold lettered, banning entrance

Celebrants all barred from ghostly spook-styled yards

Where fetching jack-o'-lanterns softly glow

While hidden speakers, housing eerie sounds

Shriek up, reverberate into an empty sky

We're celebrating, celebrating

it's so important, it's so needed

It's for the kids, it's for team spirit

It's because (tra-la) we're all — in this — together

It's for death, we need to celebrate it

It's for the candy, sani-packed, spray-cleaned

coursing down our on-trend candy chute,

That exits cleanly well beyond our gate

Or — proffered in a new fence-mounted trough

Black candles burn near sanitizer pumps

Plus torches, smartly spaced to brightly mark

Two metre gaps when lining up for treats

At one such house, one very little boy,

with mom and dad, gets cutely in the way

Of adult's festive prep as they travail

On hands and knees, work hard to place

Cascades of ersatz spider webbing

Down their front stairs, securing it beneath

Their previously-placed bright yellow tape.

That little boy keeps stepping on the webs!

Dislodging them — his parents keep blockading,

Keep on smiling, kind of, as they put grey webs back

Stick up still more bright yellow danger tape

As sun begins to set and sky turns red

"Why are you doing that?" child asks at last

"For Halloween! And you know that!" says dad

A bit sharp now, replacing festive webbing

One more time — mom smile-shushes him, says

"For fun! Fun, isn't it, dressing up and..?"

The foolish child persists, won't let it go,

"No, why is all this stuff here on the stairs?

Can't go up stairs with this stuff on them!"

Mom says because it's scaaaaary, smiles then sighs

Dad friend, says no-one's going up the stairs,

No one is going to go up the stairs

No one is allowed to go up the stairs

Tonight, no one is getting up our stairs

when we're all celebrating Halloween

all doing Halloween together

And then the child, the very little child

But not so foolish after all, shuts up.