Happy Samhain (Halloween)!

Las night we did a season's end trip to the Taylors Falls Drive-In and each had a healthy food bison burger. Winter isn't even here yet and already I have something besides the upcoming holidays to look forward to, the Drive-In reopening next Spring. I've been eating more Halloween candy than's good for me for the past week or so, so Halloween's not something I'm looking forward to, it's something I'm already enjoying. In the twenty-plus years we've lived here, I don't recall a single trick-or-treater ringing our door bell. We'll see if tonight's any different. The photo's a ghost of Jacko-lanterns past, since this year's pumpkins still await carving later today.

bats from the haunted castle's belfry

Photo by J. Harrington

Although I'm growing older, I continue to avoid, as much as possible, growing up. In the case of Halloween, I've discovered a story that it originated with the Celtic celebration of Samhain. I'll do more studying up on that over the Winter and see if I can be better prepared for an older but improved celebration this time next year. Maybe I'll have to decide whether to dress as a leprechaun or a Celtic poet.

Samhain 

By Annie Finch 

(The Celtic Halloween) 

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

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