samhain + poem fragment

The tatters of the Old Year and the welcoming of the New, in the Celtic calendar. Tonight we can hold the past and the future in our hands, stand at the threshold ready for new life, and – since the veil is thinnest of all at this time – send out greetings and voice to the Ancestors: for their peace, for ours, for their gifts to us, for our memories of them. 

I toast the turning year; light candles at every door and window, for the Old Ones and for those who have gone from my life; speak to each of them of what they meant to me and what I learned from them.

All day I've been reflecting on this passing year: the losses, the shifts, the gifts, the lessons, the hardships, the things I let go of, the things I welcome in.

And – once again – I post for you this Samhain poem, or part of it, from my collection Looking For Icarus:

 

October morning

The redwings are back, crooning over berries or skirring in flocks over the water meadows

By the wall, dead montbretia heads stream like prayer flags

 

We see ourselves more clearly

when we’re not looking

 

Calling somewhere home

 

 

 

October dusk

These nights of the quick and the dead. The earth turns away from the sun. Something of ancient fire flickers within us still; we flower like candles in grinning pumpkin faces in someone else’s window

 

 

 

Aurora

Now, tonight, under this shifting coloured sky all this falls away. You are walking, walking, staff of quickbeam, oiled boots – the long view, the green note that calls you away over these hills, where you will be

 

another indigo handprint on the hem

of night.

 

 

 

 

© Roselle Angwin 2005