the Eve of Hallowe'en

Tomorrow is Halloween, or Samhain. Its an important time in the pagan year, and its the time when the spirits of those who have gone before are closest to us.

Dear Ancestor

Your tombstone stands among the rest; neglected and alone

The name and date are chiseled out on polished, marbled stone

It reaches out to all who care

It is too late to mourn

You did not know that I’d exist

You died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you in flesh, in blood, in bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago

Spreads out among the ones you left who would have loved you so.

I wonder if you lived and loved, I wonder if you knew

That someday I would find this spot, and come to visit you.

(unknown author)

Upon Each Samhain

I miss you most upon each Samhain
When the boundary turns to sheer
I wait until the veil is parted
At the ending of the year.
Sweet spirit, as you walk among us
At the tolling of this eve
I see your face beyond the sunset
And hear your voice upon the breeze.
In the glowing of the candle,
From the shadow on the wall
I watch for you in every movement
And hear your footsteps in the hall.
Can you sit and spend the evening
As the portal opens wide?
Ancestral dead, I bid you welcome
Most recent dead, I pray, abide.
When you come I sense your presence
I put my hand out in the air
A moment, then, we stand united
Palm to palm while waiting there.
I miss you most upon each Samhain
When the boundary turns to sheer
We share these hours until the dawning
Then bid farewell until next year.

David O. Norris

~


Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,As long ago, my love, how long ago

~Christina Rossetti