We’ve reached the time of year when there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees. There are more leaves than water in the bird bath. Leaves, like Halloween spirits, daily fly through the air. The moon is, technically speaking, past full, but not so’s you’d really notice. There’s snow in the overnight forecast, with a prospect that it will have melted before Trick of Treaters start their rounds. Tomorrow’s the big night and the Better Half has a Treat bowl ready in the front hall and, as usual, has masterfully carved a Jack O’Lantern. (I reserve my fine motor skills for things like tying dry flies to tippets.)
leaves aren’t all that flies through the night air
Photo by J. Harrington
|
Come Wednesday, November brings Native American Heritage Month, so we’ll be touching on that theme off and on. Explore Minnesota has a web section on the state’s Native American heritage. I’m assuming the Governor will again issue a proclamation on November 1. In the interim, feel free to read up on land acknowledgements.
We’ve noted elsewhere in these postings that, as near as I can tell, we live very close to what was once a boundary or buffer region between the territories of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. I’m still looking for resources that may help me better understand the history of the land on which we’re living.
Samhain
By Annie Finch
(The Celtic Halloween)
In the season leaves should love,since it gives them leave to movethrough the wind, towards the groundthey were watching while they hung,legend says there is a seamstitching darkness like a name.Now when dying grasses veilearth from the sky in one last palewave, as autumn dies to bringwinter back, and then the spring,we who die ourselves can peelback another kind of veilthat hangs among us like thick smoke.Tonight at last I feel it shake.I feel the nights stretching awaythousands long behind the daystill they reach the darkness whereall of me is ancestor.I move my hand and feel a touchmove with me, and when I brushmy own mind across another,I am with my mother's mother.Sure as footsteps in my waitingself, I find her, and she bringsarms that carry answers for me,intimate, a waiting bounty."Carry me." She leaves this trailthrough a shudder of the veil,and leaves, like amber where she stays,a gift for her perpetual gaze.
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
No comments:
Post a Comment