All Hallows Eve

 

    Czeslaw Milosz, All Hallow's Eve

"In the great silence of my favorite month,

October (the red of maples, the bronze of oaks,

A clear-yellow leaf here and there on birches),

I celebrated the standstill of time.

 

The vast country of the dead had its beginning everywhere:

At the turn of a tree-lined alley, across park lawns.

But I did not have to enter, I was not called yet.

 

Motorboats pulled up on the river bank, paths in pine needles.

It was getting dark early, no lights on the other side.

 

I was going to attend the ball of ghosts and witches.

A delegation would appear there in masks and wigs,

And dance, unrecognized, in the chorus of the living."

    Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

How about this for a haunting poem?

THE WITCH

By Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Art by Jane Newland

I have walked a great while over the snow

And I am not tall nor strong.

My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set

And the way was hard and long.

I have wandered over the fruitful earth

But I never came here before.

Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

The cutting wind is a cruel foe.

I dare not stand in the blast.

My hands are stone, and my voice a groan

And the worst of death is past.

I am but a little maiden still

My little white feet are sore.

Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

Her voice was the voice that women have

Who plead for their heart's desire.

She came - she came - and the quivering flame

Sunk and died in the fire.

It never was lit again on my hearth

Since I hurried across the floor

To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.

 and 364 others

A Killing Frost

 This morning it was 30 degrees, and, as one poet put it, there was "a fur of frost on the field."  I'll have to find the poem that came from.

So, my garden is in a walled in courtyard, so it is protected somewhat from the first frost.  But I need to go out and see how it is.

 

"There comes a time when it cannot be put off any longer.  The radio warns of a killing frost coming

in the night, and you must say good-by to the garden.  You dread it, as you dread saying good-by

to any good friend; but the garden waits with its last gifts, and you must go with a bushel basket

or big buckets to receive them."

-   Rachel Peden

Photo by Sean Lewis

And here's a piece about Samhain rituals:

 

"To all the ancient ones from their houses, the Old Ones from above and below. In this time the Gods of the Earth touch our feet, bare upon the ground. Spirits of the Air whisper in our hair and chill our bodies, and from the dark portions watch and wait the Faery Folk that they may join the circle and leave their track upon the ground. It is the time of the waning year. Winter is upon us. The corn is golden in the winnow heaps. Rains will soon wash sleep into the life-bringing Earth. We are not without fear, we are not without sorrow...Before us are all the signs of Death: the ear of corn is no more green and life is not in it. The Earth is cold and no more will grasses spring jubilant. The Sun but glances upon his sister, the earth..... It is so....Even now....But here also are the signs of life, the eternal promise given to our people. In the death of the corn there is the seed--which is both food for the season of Death and the Beacon which will signal green-growing time and life returning.In the cold of the Earth there is but sleep wherein She will awaken refreshed and renewed, her journey into the Dark Lands ended. And where the Sun journeys he gains new vigor and potency; that in the spring, his blessings shall come ever young!"

-  Two Samhain Rituals, Compost Coveners, 1980 

and here's a poem from the Lore of the Door:

 "Between the heavens and the earth

The way now opens to bring forth

The Hosts of those who went on before;

Hail!  We see them now come through the Open Door.

 

Now the veils of worlds are thin;

To move out you must move in.

Let the Balefires now be made,

Mine the spark within them laid.

 

Move beyond the fiery screen,

Between the seen and the unseen;

Shed your anger and your fear,

Live anew in a new year!"

-   Lore of the Door 

 

I will dance the dance of dying days

 

"I will dance

The dance of dying days

And sleeping life.

 

I will dance

In cold, dead leaves

A bending, whirling human flame.

 

I will dance

As the Horned God rides

Across the skies.

 

I will dance

To the music of His hounds

Running, baying in chorus.

 

I will dance

With the ghosts of those

Gone before.

 

I will dance

Between the sleep of life

And the dream of death.

 

I will dance

On Samhain's dusky eye,

I will dance." 

-  Karen Bergquist, An Autumn Chant

 

On the first page of my dreambook

It's always evening

In an occupied country.

Hour before the curfew.

A small provincial city.

The houses all dark.

The store-fronts gutted.

 

I am on a street corner

Where I shouldn't be.

Alone and coatless

I have gone out to look

For a black dog who answers to my whistle.

I have a kind of halloween mask

Which I am afraid to put on."

-   Charles Simic, Empire of Dreams 

The veil is thinning

 I am haunted by this time of year.  I love the poems about thin places.

our avenue on October 15

the maple tree outside my window... October 28

"

I don't know who wrote this one: 

As I went out walking this fall afternoon,

I heard a whisper whispering.

I heard a whisper whispering,

Upon this fine fall day...

 

As I went out walking this fall afternoon,

I heard a laugh a' laughing.

I heard a laugh a' laughing,

Upon this fine fall day...

 

I heard this whisper and I wondered,

I heard this laugh and then I knew.

The time is getting near my friends,

The time that I hold dear my friends,

The veil is getting thin my friends,

And strange things will pass through."

-   The Veil is Getting Thinner

Last evening at Cape May, and last week of October begins

 

Ana Woodruff,   Autumn Dance

I've had a good , serene retreat, disturbed only by my ongoing bladder issues.  No bleeding, just six or seven trips to the bathroom through the night.  Sigh.  Part of getting old.

But it's the beginning of a week I always like: this last week of October, when the veil is thin

 

"Tonight as the barrier between the two realms grows thin,

Spirits walk amongst us, once again.

They be family, friends and foes,

Pets and wildlife, fishes and crows.

But be we still mindful of the Wee Folke at play,

Elves, fey, brownies, and sidhe.

 

Some to trick, some to treat,

Some to purposely misguide our feet.

Stay we on the paths we know

As planting sacred apples we go.

 

This Feast I shall leave on my doorstep all night.

In my window one candle shall burn bright,

To help my loved ones find their way

As they travel this eve, and this night, until day.

Bless my offering, both Lady and Lord

Of breads and fruits, greens and gourd."

-  Akasha, Samhain Ritual

 

It must come from my celtic roots, this inclination to the supernatural and the magical.

At Cape May

 

photo by Tina Giaimo

I'm making my annual retreat here at Cape May this year.  It's chilly and beautiful.

photo by Cathy Hofstedter

photo by Michael Walsh

roosting Monarchs

Sad the robins pipe at set of day

 

photo by Denise Robicheau

"The sweet calm sunshine of October, now

    Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold

The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough

    drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold."

-   William Cullen Bryant

"Across the land a faint blue veil of mist

Seems hung; the woods wear yet arrayment sober

Till frost shall make them flame; silent and whist

The drooping cherry orchards of October

Like mournful pennons hang their shriveling leaves

Russet and orange: all things now decay;

Long since ye garnered in your autumn sheaves,

And sad the robins pipe at set of day."

-  Siegfried Sassoon, October

The light falls so variously here

 

 Here's a poem by Henrik Nordbrandt

The Glass Door 

"Like someone who opens a door of glass

or sees his own reflection in it

when he returns from the woods

the light falls so variously here at the end of October

that nothing is whole or can be made into a whole

because the cracks are too uncertain and constantly moving.

 

Then you experience the miracle

of entering into yourself like a diamond

in glass, enjoying its own fragility

when the storm carries everything else away

including the memory of a freckled girlfriend

out over the bluing lake hidden behind the bare hills."

-   Henrik Nordbrandt,  The Glass Door

    Translated by Thomas Satterlee

Here's a poem by Irish poet Harry Clifton:

October

The big news around here is the fall of leaves

In Harrington Street and Synge Street,

Lying about in pockets, adrift at your feet

As you kick them away. The other news is the trees—

Their yellow, as I speak, is unbelievable,

Not that you need me to tell you. Everywhere

The house is falling down around our ears

And it’s wonderful, in the dry, spicy air,

How quietly it happens. Close your eyes,

Don’t think, just listen. Hear them fall, the years

We came towards each other, out of a sun

Already westering. Look at us, even yet,

Exchanging tree-lore, twenty years on

In a leafless cathedral—bride and groom, well-met.

 

—Harry Clifton, from The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass (2012)

 

October is Marigold

 

Photo by Douglas Claytor

 

Here's a poem by Ted Hughes

 October Dawn

"October is marigold, and yet

A glass half full of wine left out

 

To the dark heaven all night, by dawn

Has dreamed a premonition

 

Of ice across its eye as if

The ice-age had begun its heave.

 

The lawn overtrodden and strewn

From the night before, and the whistling green

 

Shrubbery are doomed. Ice

Has got its spearhead into place.

 

First a skin, delicately here

Restraining a ripple from the air;

 

Soon plate and rivet on pond and brook;

Then tons of chain and massive lock

 

To hold rivers. Then, sound by sight

Will Mammoth and Sabre-tooth celebrate

 

Reunion while a fist of cold

Squeezes the fire at the core of the world,

 

Squeezes the fire at the core of the heart,

And now it is about to start."

-   Ted Hughes,

Here is a poem by Denise Levertov:

"A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day's blow

rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can."

-   Denise Levertov, Variation on a Theme by Rilke 

My mind moves in more than one place

Tara Turner,   The Souls of Leaves

Here's a poem from Christina Rossetti:

An October Garden

 

In my Autumn garden I was fain

     To mourn among my scattered roses;

     Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses

To Autumn’s languid sun and rain

When all the world is on the wane!

     Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,

     Nor heard the nightingale in tune.

 

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,

     You are but coarse compared with roses:

     More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses,

Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,

That least and last which cold winds balk;

     A rose it is though least and last of all,

     A rose to me though at the fall.

 

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,

A point outside the glittering current;

My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,

At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,

My mind moves in more than one place,

In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,

The dry scent of a dying garden in September,

The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.

What I love is near at hand,

Always, in earth and air."

The Golden Hour     Photo by April Lindner

 

These are my tidings

 Not quite a frost, but getting there.

The last time I wrote , I had trouble attaching the pictures.  Don't know why.   Will try again today.

Autumn in Garrett County     Photo by Sherry Sophia

Now it is working!    I will go back and re-attach the ones from the other day.

Samuel Palmer    The Harvest Moon     1783

"My tidings for you: the stag bells,

Winter snows, Summer is gone.

 

Wind high and cold, low the sun,

Short his course, sea running high.

 

Deep-red the bracken, its shape all gone,

The wild goose has raised his wonted cry.

 

Cold has caught the wings of birds.

Season of ice – these are my tidings."

-  Irish Poem, Translated by Caitlin Matthews

 

 

Hurricane Ian has passed

We only had rain for three solid days, which was not a problem. Especially compared to the devastation in Florida.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin is still waging war on Ukraine.  When will the Russian people rise up and rebel against him?

I still have great difficulty writing.  Still trying.

 

"October inherits summer's hand-me-downs: the last of the ironweed, its purple silken tatters turning brown, and the tiny starry white asters tumbling untidily on the ground like children rolling with laughter; stiff, drying black-eyed Susans whose dark eyes gleamed from July's roadsides; coneflowers with deep yellow petals surrounding brown pincushion centers from which bumblebees still are sipping honey.  The assignment of yellow is taken up now by thin-leafed wild sunflowers and artichokes."

-   Rachel Peden

Dahlias in my garden