Samhain 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)
Light, darkness, birth, death, each year begins with hope and ends in resignation.
The sun seeps through the clouds like a reopened wound, its watery light staining the landscape as if a thrice-washed bandage. At the edge of a shadowed wood, yellow daisies glow in the gloaming of the evening sun like a string of jack-o'-lanterns marking out the territorial margin between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
The wind whispers the names of the missing through the evergreens. Wind chimes toll a death knell for the departed. We cover their eyes for the ferryman so they can't see their destination. Into light or darkness we are unconcerned as long as they're at peace. Their cairns form the portals to the Otherworld. The moon holds a mirror to their souls.
Tonight, the glass is broken. Tonight, the dead and darkness become as one. We didn't used to fear the dead, we feared their disappointment. Like faded family portraits, ghosts were pale memories of once vibrant friends and familiars. Kobolds, goblins and Swedish tomte were once our kith and kin. In our desperate longing to reclaim them, we seek out witches, priests and necromancers to throw us winter's bone.
They cannot.
Life is a sacred gift, death a sacred mystery beyond the veil of which our mortal eyes were never meant to see.
The sun seeps through the clouds like a reopened wound, its watery light staining the landscape as if a thrice-washed bandage. At the edge of a shadowed wood, yellow daisies glow in the gloaming of the evening sun like a string of jack-o'-lanterns marking out the territorial margin between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
The wind whispers the names of the missing through the evergreens. Wind chimes toll a death knell for the departed. We cover their eyes for the ferryman so they can't see their destination. Into light or darkness we are unconcerned as long as they're at peace. Their cairns form the portals to the Otherworld. The moon holds a mirror to their souls.
Tonight, the glass is broken. Tonight, the dead and darkness become as one. We didn't used to fear the dead, we feared their disappointment. Like faded family portraits, ghosts were pale memories of once vibrant friends and familiars. Kobolds, goblins and Swedish tomte were once our kith and kin. In our desperate longing to reclaim them, we seek out witches, priests and necromancers to throw us winter's bone.
They cannot.
Life is a sacred gift, death a sacred mystery beyond the veil of which our mortal eyes were never meant to see.
© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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In modern popular culture, Samhain is portrayed as the Celtic new year. In truth, the Celts divided the year into two parts, a half year each of light and darkness. Beltane ushered in the light half while Samhain ushered in the darkness. For the Celts, the place of the afterlife was the Otherworld. On Samhain, the barrier between our world and the Otherworld was said to be lower, so ghosts and spirits could cross back through. They bribed them with sweets to welcome them home.
The first line of the second paragraph was inspired by some of the oddest light I've ever seen early last week. The second line by walking out in the park a few days later, which also inspired the picture.
Kobolds are German, goblins (a corrupted version of kobold) are Anglo-Saxon, and tomte obviously Swedish. All three began as guardian spirits of farmsteads that soon became walled enclosures and tons (town). Somehow in that migration they went from being mischievous to associated with evil. I tend to wonder the role Christianity in that. Tomte are especially interesting to me as the same word exists in Norwegian but has been relegated to an untranslatable additive to beer. In that way, the spirits still live.
I ran across "winter's bone" as a movie title. I loved the imagery it evoked to used it in my own way without being completely certain of any other meaning. I see a lean, gnawed bone to boil in soup during the winter, not particularly sustaining but given the dearth of other options, a welcome addition.
Picture notes:
ReplyDeleteThese are the flowers Karen and I saw while walking in the park. We cleared out some palm fronds behind them to give more of a forest impression. She dimmed down the background and the green of the stems with two different masks in PhotoShop, and cropped it a bit. I like the fairy tale feel of her final composition.