Samhainby 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.
Find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
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I don’t often read a book in one or two sittings, but October, October by Katya Balen was so good I had to. It arrived toward the end of last week and I starting reading it last night because it was already the 30th of October. This morning one of our cats woke me up at 5:45 so I stayed in bed and finished it.
This novel is written from the POV of October. I appreciated this single narrative as so many books these days skip backward and forward in time with different narrators which can be confusing. October lives in the woods with her dad. Her mother left when she was four and October’s never forgiven her. She fiercely loves her wild life with her dad, relishing everything from cold dips in the pond to climbing trees, cooking over an open fire, and growing their own food. On her eleventh birthday, her dad has an accident and she has to go live with her mother in London.
The story is told from the perspective of this sensitive young girl who just like any wild thing feels overwhelmed and out of place surrounded by walls, traffic noise, crowds of people, rules, clocks, etc. She misses her father and doesn’t know, like, or appreciate her mother, so she feels dreadfully alone and afraid. Her descriptions of how she is feeling when she’s overwhelmed by fear or anger or the noises and sensory input around her will probably be relatable to people who are highly sensitive.
This is a story of letting go of old and hurtful stories that we tell ourselves, how to see things differently, that new beginnings and new stories are possible, and that even in dark or confusing times, beauty, hope, friendship, and wild adventures can happen. It’s a story of changing, growing up, forgiveness of oneself and others, and a reminder that love surrounds us if we open to it.
I highly recommend October, October to lovers of exceptional stories with a vibrant protagonist you can root for and a feel-good, redemptive, sensible ending, those who enjoy YA or books in the 9-12 year old range. It won a Yoto Carnegie Medal in the UK and, if you like owls, this book features one. I won’t tell you more than that. Happy reading! If you’ve read it already, please share in comments!!
Theme in Yellowby Carl Sandburg
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
To Autumnby John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation.
All Hallowsby Louise Glück
Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
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Tasting the Wild Grapesby Mary Oliver
The red beast
who lives in the side of these hills
won’t come out for anything you have:
money or music. Still, there are moments
heavy with light and good luck. Walk
quietly under these tangled vines
and pay attention, and one morning
something will explode underfoot
like a branch of fire; one afternoon
something will flow down the hill
in plain view, a muscled sleeve the color
of all October! And forgetting
everything you will leap to name it
as though for the first time, your lit blood
rushing not to a word but a sound
small-boned, thin-faced, in a hurry,
lively as the dark thorns of the wild grapes
on the unsuspecting tongue!
The fox! The fox!
You can find this poem in American Primitive: Poems.
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Swimming in the Rainby Chana Bloch
Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky
find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,
and I'm swimming back to the beginning.
The forecasts were wrong.
Half the sky is dark
but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false. Thank God
I've got the good sense at last
not to come in out of the rain.
The waves open
to take in the rain, and sunlight
falls from the clouds
onto the face of the deep as it did
on the first day
before the dividing began.
You can find this poem in Swimming in the Rain.
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Rememberby Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away tonight.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
You can find this poem in She Had Some Horses.
How are you feeling concerning what’s happening in the world right now? If you could settle on one emotion, to get to the root of all the other emotions you might be experiencing, is it fear? It seems to me, from listening to people over the past couple of weeks, that fear is very strong. Many of us are living in survival mode and in that state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. I am mostly noticing the fighting–those who are angry and loud, and the freezing–those who are staying still and quiet. And it’s all because we’re scared.
What can we do with all this fear? Have you spent the past few weeks walking in circles, not taking care of yourself, self-medicating with too much screen-time and too much junk food? Too much wine? In a daze? In a funk? Not knowing what to do with the worry and anxiety? This is probably the norm and I’ve felt it too. However, staying stuck in our heads and abandoning our bodies and the world immediately around us will not help anyone. It won’t help people who are suffering and it won’t help us to be supportive of those we care about.
Even in the midst of worldwide chaos and uncertainty, we can set a table, light a candle, and sit down together for a wholesome meal. (Do you remember that last scene in the film Don’t Look Up when they made a meal and all sat down together even though they knew it was their last supper?) We can take a walk in the sunshine or in the lashing rain. We can pick up clutter, fold the laundry, and take out the recycling. When life is chaotic, we need to bring order and beauty into our lives. This is our defiance against the darkness, as Sarah Clarkson so aptly put it in a recent podcast episode.
This is our work. And this is part of our love for the world. It starts with us. Love your neighbor as yourself, says that Golden Rule. Yes, we pray, weep, march, or call our elected officials to change things. But first, we love ourselves and care for what we have. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we have today.
Why? You fill your own cup first so you’ll have something for yourself and to give others. Fill your own lamp so you can light the way for yourself and others. Only you know what this means for you. For me, this means my early morning practices. What I do before others need me and the day really begins. This usually includes: prayer, meditation, yoga, my morning pages, inspirational reading, exercise, a good breakfast, my herbs and other supplements. If I do these things, I feel strong and ready for what comes. Much more so than if I roll out of bed groggily and too late for these practices and have to answer emails and complete tasks right away. What I do first thing affects the rest of my day, replenishes me spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally.
Another way to think about it is to take care of what you have. Our job is not to worry about tomorrow, but to live our lives fully today. And part of this is to take care of what you have. Don’t neglect your responsibilities. You live in a body, so care for it. Feed it delicious food that delights the senses and that will help you to feel your best. If you’re an adult, you must know by now which foods make you feel alert and energized and which ones make you feel dull and sluggish. Exercise every day. Whether it’s ten minutes of stretching, an hour-long class, a walk, a run, Pilates, whatever, just move your body. Remove clutter and tidy up your living areas. You experience more calm when your living space is clean and orderly than if it’s a disaster. If you’re not good at this, no excuses–learn how. If you’re reading this, you have access to the internet which means you can learn how to do nearly anything. And donate whatever you don’t find beautiful, useful, or haven’t used in a year so you can live lighter and will have less to keep clean.
These are just a few examples of what we can do when life is chaotic. The go-to might be to comfort ourselves by overeating, not moving, and letting our lives fall apart, but that is actually not comfort as I posted about in the spring. The etymology of the word “comfort” means to strengthen much, to give or add strength to. Not much strengthening is happening when we’re eating a whole bag of chips, tankards of beer, and watching a whole season of some Netflix show while the house goes to rack and ruin around us. We are actually weakened by this.
So, love yourself today and give yourself a chance to feel more calm, strong, and centered by taking care of yourself, by filling your own cup first. Because we are needed to be lamps in the dark for others. To point the way toward goodness, peace, love, and beauty.
A Song for Autumnby Mary Oliver
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
Life of Kim 