hello-zombie:  THE DANCE OF THE THIRTEEN SKELETONSIn a snow-enshrouded graveyardgripped by winter's bitter chill,not a single soul is stirring,all is silent, all is stilltill a distant bell tolls midnightand the spirits work their will.  For emerging from their coffins buried deep beneath the snow, thirteen bony apparitions now commence their spectral show, and they gather in the moonlight undulating as they go.  They shake their flimsy shoulders and they flex their fleshless knees and they nod their skulls in greeting in the penetrating breeze as they form an eerie circle near the gnarled and twisted trees.  They link their spindly fingers as they promenade around casting otherworldly shadows on the silver-mantled ground and their footfalls in the snowdrift make a soft, susurrous sound.  The thirteen grinning skeletons continue on their way as to strains of soundless music they begin to swing and sway and they circle ever faster in their ghastly roundelay.  Faster, faster ever faster and yet faster now they race, winding, whirling, ever swirling in the frenzy of their pace and they shimmer in the moonlight as they spin themselves through space. Then as quickly as it started  their nocturnal dance is done for the bell that is their signal loudly tolls the hour of one and they bow to one another  in their bony unison. Then they vanish to their coffins by their ghostly thoroughfare and the emptiness of silence once more fills the frosted air and the snows that mask their footprints show no sign that they were there. —Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Arnold Lobel
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