October Speaks

Oh, I’ve got heaps to say!

Did you realise I’m two 

opposites in one identity?

This is not always 

well understood.

Call me fractured if you like,

call me split – one thing in the North;

for the Southern Hemisphere

in reversal … 

my own alter ego.

There’s intrigue in being  

simultaneously waxing

and waning (like the moon, 

but not quite): joined 

by shared time.

On Spring days in one place – 

warming gently, shining – 

in the other I’m 

messy Autumn. My people 

here smile, there scowl.

But wait! I’m more different,

even, than that. (Different

at the same time.) I can be 

the golden part of autumn, or 

the grey aspect of Spring.

Expectations vary. Take,

for instance, Halloween.

It’s cold only northerly: 

darkening early, a good time

for ghosts and tricksters to prowl.

Remember your dead, instead 

at chilly Samhain (Halloween’s 

earlier, true name). Southernwise

I’ll then replace it gladly,  

hosting warm, sexy Beltane!

Yes, my usual hobby-horse! I REALLY dislike the corruption of Samhain into Halloween, and the celebration of that Halloween on bright, sunny Spring evenings in Australia – where it's about nothing but dress-ups and lollies. (Also see my reply to Jae Rose in the comments.)

Written for Friday Writings #198: October Writes at Poets and Storytellers United. This October is quite long-winded! That's because I decided to do it as an acrostic – but with each letter of 'October' starting a whole verse instead of just one line.

I, Persephone

At Samhain, as the veil thins (30/4/23).

He dwells in the land of the dead,

that hidden space below the surface 

of our everyday lives, that dark 

lying behind our everyday light.

Summer has passed. As autumn

lengthens into transition, a bridge 

between extremes of season,

I retreat from daylight, draw in,

begin dreaming of one who resides

in deep recesses of memory, deep

hidden chambers of the heart.

I forget how to be summer happy.

Where is the lightness of spring?

Flowers fade. My dancing feet

grow slow and still. Yet I’m restless.

More and more his image arises

and the timbre of his voice, calling ...

his movements, the touch of his skin,

the gaze of his eyes meeting mine.

It’s time for me, once again

to dare those depths, return

to that hidden place, that realm

where love also dwells. I was not

coerced, I always go willingly. 

I’m mixing pantheons: Persephone belongs to the Greeks, whereas Samhain is a Celtic festival. It is Samhain here as I write this, the date when, traditionally, the veil between the dead and the living thins. It is also the time of year when, according to the myth, Persephone rejoins her husband Hades in the underworld while our world is plunged into winter.  

This is a response to my own prompt for Poets and Storytellers United, in Friday Writings #75: A Character from Myth or Fable. 

A Pause in the Long Goodbyes

  A Pause in the Long Goodbyes

My night cat prowls the house

deliberately, yowling low, 

glaring at things I can’t see – 

but I think I know.

I was told she hates other cats 

and will want to attack. 

This Samhain night,

I feel the others here.

Tonight is a pause

in the long goodbyes

made to each in turn –

my guardians, my dear familiars.

How strange it must be

for her, confronting 

their unknown, shadowy ghosts

in a place they know and claim.

 

Them, they‘d surely understand

she is the one who loves me now, 

whose presence keeps me happy, 

healthy, safe. My new protector.

But not from them,

I try to tell her. To them 

I indicate: this one has the right

to be here with me, now.

She calms as midnight 

comes and passes. 

Stroking her, I bless 

and remember them.

Poetic Asides prompt #30 for April 2021: A goodbye poem.

Written and photographed as it was happening.

Solitary

Solitary

Tomorrow will be Beltane night. 

This time I’ll arrange to be out

when little Aussie trick-or-treaters

trailed by their mums and dads 

pour onto the streets,

colourful costumes bizarre

in the strong daylight

of a warm Spring evening.

They don’t know

it isn’t really Halloween here.

They think that’s a calendar date

not a season. And they never heard

of old, cold Samhain, when the dead

may return as the veil grows thin....

(Who turned it into Halloween?

Oh yes, of course – churches.)

On Beltane night, tomorrow,

I’ll get back after dark

when the baby ghosts and monsters

are safely home in bed. 

I’ll bathe. I’ll cast a circle.

There will be water, salt,

candles, a special crystal,

and rose oil, the perfume of love.

Bodily lovers being past or dead,

I’ll gaze at my own 

face in the mirror 

and speak to myself the words

of a ritual blessing, bringing in

love for me, then love for my friends,

love for the Goddess and the God, 

love for all creation, love of Life.

Beautiful world, I will not forget you,

even when the work gets hard

and the nights grow cold. 

Spinning the Wheel of the Year

alone at my tiny altar, the love I summon 

is for you, your regeneration; 

the love I call into being is for all of us.

The love I am is that which I seek. 

Candle image by Maliz Ong. Released into Public Domain, License CCOC0


Sharing with Poets United's Pantry of Poetry and Prose, 2ain

Loving Friends

Loving Friends

For Tan

She met us when we were new to the Caldera

and she a young thing, with a young child.

She and her man were planting a rainforest then,

where the original forest had been destroyed.

Now she’s a grandmother with a house in town

down by the river, with a lush garden (she hasn’t 

stopped planting) – jungly shrubs and trees

you can eat from. She feeds herself and friends.

She’s a sprite of her garden. Also

of the mountains and waterways she visits.

Sometimes, when she’s alone in these spaces,

others of that kind will show themselves.

She paints them: ethereal, part of the landscape.

My husband Andrew never saw such beings

but they spoke to him, helped him write a story

asking us all to preserve some of their wild places.

He’s been dead seven years (I still can’t believe

it can be so long). Whenever his name arises,

she exclaims with joy, ‘God, I loved him!’

and I cry and smile, remembering.

He was angel, not faery, but close enough.

Their soul origins, their human affection,

made such a bond that on Samhain night

in my home, she looked up and saw him.

He was crossing, as he did often in life,

from corridor to bedroom – probably 

just come from the study where he wrote.

He stopped to look at her, met her eyes.

A moment, a glimpse, then he disappeared.

Meanwhile I (who rarely see) felt the presence.

So quick, we couldn’t be sure. But we measured

the right height on the wall, also we pendulumed.

Yes, it was him. (Of course. Who else would it be?) 

The spirits are called by love, and drawn I think

by their own love too, to visit when the veil thins....

When we say goodbye, we hug hard, she and I.

April

April

April began with a song of loss and pain,

a beautiful song, although of grief;

it filled my heart the whole month long.

This April I have walked with death 

alongside poetry. Each held my hand –

sometimes one, sometimes the other. 

Sometimes they held hands with each other,

and both with me; we sometimes danced 

even while April rain kept falling.

All the ghosts of all the loves

drifted like shadows around our dance

or distantly kept pace along the path.

And then, on the final night of April

Samhain arrived, the feast of the dead

when the veil thins and we welcome them.

One by one they came to greet me,

then turned away at last, as death sang

more softly now into the ear of poetry.

April was a song of love, a song

to break my heart. April was a month of rain: 

rain and poetry, and loved ones gone. 

Background story:

In the first prompt for Poems in April (2019) at 'imaginary garden with real toads', Marian included the song 'April, Come She Will' from Simon and Garfunkle, written by Paul Simon and sung beautifully by Art Garfunkle. It must be the only one of their songs I'd not heard before. I fell in love with it, played it over and over, and shared it on my facebook profile. That enabled me to notice comments on it at YouTube, about a tragic loss in Garfunkle's life. I became curious, and went on to immerse myself in Art Garfunkle via his website, his poetry, his journal-like memoir. I had always paid more attention to Paul Simon, thinking him the true creative genius of the duo, and dismissing Art as just a beautiful voice – like many people, I think, including Art himself in a generous and obviously sincere tribute in the memoir. I discovered, to my joy, a perfectly lovely man – modest, humorous, adventurous, deeply philosophical, full of integrity, impressively well-read, devoted to his family, and very creative in his own right in music, writing, and visual art. 

Meanwhile, my own April was taken up in dealing with some recent deaths of loved ones and, inevitably, recalling earlier losses ... as well as finding out about one impending. The April poems, and the S&G song constantly in my head, helped me through it. Thank you, Marian and 'toads'. And of course, for a (Southern Hemisphere) Pagan like me, Samhain being the last night of April was perfect, as I could complete my April journey in a ritual to reconnect lovingly with my dead and then let them return to the spirit land.

Linking this to the first Tuesday Platform after April at 'imaginary garden'.

For My Inspirations

For day 30 of April Poems at 'imaginary garden with real toads, we are invited to write a poem of praise to a source of inspiration, in 30-60 words. (Mine is 60.)  

For My Inspirations

This is Samhain,

the night when my most dear dead 

come close, 

and the honoured ancestors too.

The love we shared in life,

the character traits passed down,

all shape me

and shape and inform

the lines I write.

Bless me now with your wisdom

and be welcome at my feast.

The lantern is lit, and the fire.

Come, sit!

(Some of you may be thinking, 'What's she on about? This is Beltane'. But no – I live in the Southern Hemisphere.)

Paganing

 Poetry Month, day 30

At the final day of Thirty Poems in April for 2018, we are asked to turn nouns into verbs. What wild and wondrous metaphors that  might produce! ("If we firework, is it from rage or orgasm?" we are asked.) But poems have minds of their own, and mine took a rather more literal approach.

Paganing

I'm Samhaining tonight.

No, the date's not wrong, 

I've Hemisphered it

(Southerned it) Sabbated it

to this arc of the circle

where I live and witch.

Oh, there'll be plenty 

on the other side of the world 

Northerning the date –

lighting fires and jumping

into each other's hot arms,

Beltaining the evening away.

Here, I’m ancestring.

Places are set around the table:

plated, cutleried, cupped,

food and wine ready

for those who care to come

spiriting through the veil.

And not only my forebears,
those past generations –

no, also my husbands  

(three) who unspoused me

in life or death but all dead now …

and certain others never wedlocked.

What kind of ritualling would it be

without those faces at my feast?

But first I’ll go midnighting, out there

with my wands and my black cat.

So long since I've ceremonied outdoors!

It's overcast, dark. That’s fitting.

I candle the space minimally. I know

that my neighbour over the back fence

is away, having schizophrenicked himself

into hospital, poor chap, but it frees me

to cast and call unseen; to between; to open;

then welcome honoured guests.