Samhain 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)
On a high, rugged hill, a ruinous castle perches, its crenellations forming a gap-toothed grin. In the donjon its hidden garrison is poised like a falcon ready to stoop upon its prey, playing draughts until their time is nigh. Inveterate gamblers, they wager on our lives. Tonight, the portal opens.
Storm clouds mar the horizon. Bass note moans of thunder resonate below a howling soprano wind. Rain beats a cadence against rooftops like drum. Whipped into a furor by the rhetoric of the air, the sea renews its ancient rivalry with the land. Moiling up beside the water gate, ranks of waves surge forward to briefly reclaim their birthright before retreating in a Pyrrhic victory.
As the storm abates, spirits emerge through a postern disguised as a cairn-like opening, the cave of cats. Green-eyed and hungry, they creep through the savage garden, shadows against a bloody harvest moon. This one night, they knock like missed opportunity, soft yet insistent. Through a tatting of ice-worked windows, they eavesdrop on our lives.
Sheltered in warm yellow light beside a trestle heaped with bounty, we sing and eat and dance. We care not for the ancient spirits. Like the fading colors beyond our windows, we set no place for them at our table. With pastries and sweetmeats we bribe them to favor someone else's feast.
Enraged by their irrelevance, they vex us with misfortune. Their mischief comes to naught. We no longer heed the rites of kith and kin. Until they prowl the night on tiny goblins' feet, changelings of our hearth and home. It is only in that self-imposed darkness that we remember and regret.
© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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I really wish I had the proper amount of time to work on this message. Too many distractions recently.
I couldn't get by without an allusion to Hurricane Sandy. My wife flies photo surveys of the coast after such storms, so the affected people are always in our thoughts as we watch such disasters unfold.
Samhain is one of two days a year the Celts believed the doorway to the Otherworld was open (along with Beltane). To them, the spirits were not as malevolent as we portray them on Halloween. That is more of a Christian construct.
I was thinking of how certain personalities run like fractures through certain families. How a long dead aunt can suddenly take shape as someone else's daughter. Fascinating to see those traits emerge over time.
Sweetmeats are candied or crystallized fruits, a favorite medieval treat.
The only other worthwhile note is on the Cave of the Cats, so named for the magical wildcats that emerged from it in one of the Irish sagas. It is called Oweynagat and is located near a ring fort in Rathcroghan in Ireland. In Irish fairy tales the spirits of the underworld emerge from it each Samhain.
Picture Notes:
ReplyDeleteThe base image for this picture was from our first trip to Scotland in 1990. It is Dunchraigaig Cairn in Kilmartin, Argyl. The image is a scan of an old print photo. It had to be sharpened and darkened, then I put some fog and mist in the background. The sky was white and washed out in the photo, so I used the same base clouds as in the picture of the Raven. I also had to clean up the image as the mouth of the cairn had some digital noise.