Mother has dressed me up as a gypsy

For my third Halloween.

She has designed a purple skirt

Adorned with row upon row of rick-rack

In bright, vagabond colors.

With it, I wear a peasant blouse,

And, best of all,

Tangled strands of beads,

Her whole drawerful of costume jewelry

Encircling my neck.

I look the part,

Like I just stepped out of

A gypsy wagon in a forest,

Too young to tell fortunes or dance.

Thus, clothed in wonder and wishes,

I move through cold, velvet shadows,

The smallest figure in the greedy herd

Of masked children.

Clutching a simple, brown sack

And Mother’s hand,

I fear that, if the neighbors ask me for a trick,

All I know is a crooked cartwheel.