Samhain Illuminations

 

Old red eye rolls out

of November’s lowering head,

Sliabh Rua flushes

at death’s radiant whisper.

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November Walk

 

Autumn lies in the gutter –

a drunken slump of tattered leaves.

Winter, a shameless filigree of naked trees,

keeps a cool distance, stretching 


its scrawny arms to catch the dying

sun. A shroud of cloud

conspires quietly with sky,

to lower it gently down.

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Winter’s Midnight Skies. 


 

Cloaked in stone-cold moonlight,

the cemetery is deathly quiet – life lies in ruins.

Wild-faced night hags, cailleacha oíche, nowhere in sight.

 

Out of the dark, a sudden flash and a tree explodes

in feathered eruptions. The rapid scattering of silent, winged things

slow-diving the black sky, displacing the cold air with their downy drift.


The dark blinks with orange eyes.

Scréachóga reilige, graveyard screechers possess the night.

 

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There are several names for owl in Irish including cailleach oíche (kile-yock ee-ha) night hag and scréachóg reilige (shkray-hoeg rell-ig-ah) the barn owl, translates as graveyard screecher.​

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Slow Release

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Snow falls like a Eucharist
dissolving on the black tongue
of the longest night

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Frozen Moment

 

A muffled sky tosses

feather-light. All is swan-mute,

a symphony in white.

 

The crystalline intricacies

of a spider’s frozen web

catch my eye. Enraptured, I dangle

like a dead fly, trapped

in its fine iced strands.

 

In wintertime – everything is suspended.

 

 

 

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Winter Retreat

Roses have rambled on,
a smother of hairy willowherb – flagrant

vagabond, tramps the deserted garden;

the season has drawn to a close.

Only the ivy–chic winter retreat, remains

open for business. Yellow florets of welcome bunting

spread like clustered stars upon a green banquette;

a smorgasbord of nectar, pollen and berries

sprinkled with a condiment of tiny insects - its speciality.

Quivers of excited sparrows flit the air.

Squadrons of pigeons fly over.

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The sweet swoosh of wings.

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The Sky Road Home

 

Walked up the long gone

avenue to my old gone

long-ago school. Found myself – there – under

the chestnut tree, behind the bicycle shed – rusty, skeletal remains 

fallen horse chestnut brown time-forgotten deep buried  

relics. Resurrected a little russet-red conker-headbanger girl.

‘Whose child is this?’ wheezed the unsettled

breeze that rattled and shook the shivering leaves still

clinging to an imperceptible line of invisible

trees uncast at last from their long dark shadows.

‘She’s mine!’ I exclaimed and reclaimed myself. Light  

as a feather unfalling to bird,  we took the sky

road home - together. Feather, afterfeather.

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I have included some Irish words and here is the pronunciation and translation:

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Fadó fadó /   Long ago (Fa -though)      

Éistigí / Listen (Ay-shtig-ee)        

Tar Liom / Follow me (Thar-lum)

Ciúnas, le de thoill / Quiet, please (Queue-in-us leh duh hull)

‘Mo chuisle. A chuisle mo chroí /My Darling but literally My pulse. Beat of my heart (Muh cooshla. A cooshla muh cree.) 

 

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Day Trip to Newgrange with my Grandmother When I Was a Little Girl 

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My grandmother tell me whispers:

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‘Fadó, fadó, far away, far below.  Éistigí, eistigí. Listen. Oh shimmering sun. Oh breath of life. Still. Life. Still. Breathing. Below, below. Fadó, fadó. Kings, queens, gods, goddesses preparing, turning, positioning crowns to glitter to glow, tilting glinting halos light caught dark to shine between flicker and flow, flaming unborn visions to flight, crowning spinning heads brim full to dreaming, deep in the majesty of time.

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‘Éistigí. Shimmering sun. Breathing life. Below. ‘Fadó, fadó’.  She whispers ‘Tar liom’. I follow.

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Up one grassy mound to another, then another, little giddy goat galloping up, rolling down, skipping, squealing, spinning round and round and round. Knowing nothing of time – yet, but to follow the sun following me in cartwheeling revolutions of joy and its grip soft, green, underfoot, holding me here, holding me now and Oh how it fills a throbbing heart to burst spilling over with bird songs of joy and sparkling wide eyed wonder.

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Eyes open. Sun. Eyes Close. Wait. Open. Sun.

Bright. Shadow. Bright. Shadow.

Close. Cover eyes. Splay fingers.

Filter. Flicker. Filter. Flicker.

Shimmer - Shimmer - Shimmer.

Glimpse.  Vision. Dream.

Whispering whispers.

Tar Liom. Tar liom. Follow the sun.

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Up ahead, my grandmother billows in floral skirts leading the way beyond here, beyond now, gathering me - ribbons and bows - in ripples, in flow.  When the powder puff cloud of her passes on through the yawning gap and disappears, everything slows. My spinning head.  My thumping heart.  My every motion winds down to stop and I turn to stone - to this chiselled moment tracing rhythms throbbing to touch. There is no name for this. This day of light and shade, cloud and revelation, forever and now humming, thrumming, trembling stone, coiling and uncoiling the spiral of me, of everyone on this trail. Ciúnas, le de thoill. Quiet, please. The stone is singing.

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I spiral on to the rippling melody of touchstone, following my grandmother’s dusty footprints laid down before me as softly as snow on snow – a faint trail leading toward a mound. The Mound! Oh how it looms blooms, blossoms and grows on approach and I, all shrinky Alicey, my heart full of wonder, bending and folding like a butterfly, crouch down and pass on through the low portal of time, entering a long dark narrow passage, becoming one more tiny dimple in the continuum.

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Squinty blinking into the vast unknown shape-shifting familars appearing and vanishing between icy breaths, oh so shivery cold to the bone, stirring the primal tendrils of instinct to search, reach, touch, intertwining ribboning strands binding, briefly. We connect, reunite and persist in this heart of darkness where shadow dust sprinkles tangled souls into cradles rocked by rhythm and scattered bones, where time bleeds in sun and echoes, where I feel flow.

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Silently we seep into sacred chambers, swelling with life in the slip between flesh and bone, where blood pools, warms to touch in anticipation of a promise, a spark.

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Hearts beat, beat, beat, pounding hard, fast, loud, throbbing rhythm’s ancient pulse, then slowly, gently down, synchronise to quivering harmony and grace notes time’s simple signature and Oh, how we hang in this hallowed place oscillating, unknowing, hoping for the untangling of everything so barely contained.

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Clinging on in unspangled enfolding black ribbons of fragile awakening unravelling, flinging against the entangled dark whispering:-

‘Oh Nana. What do I do now Nana? What do I do now?’

Her sweet voice comes calling, softly again and again. 

‘Mo chuisle, a chuisle mo chroí.’

Tilt your shattered head skyward and wait for light to return.’

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Little Crosses ✚    (A Christmas Story)

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And we wend our way home, my mother and I, leaving a trail of jingling expectations flashing on and off, on and off in our wake, uncontainable simulations of joy in every colour and what is real and what is joy anyway? And we say that was a good day wasn’t it and we nod, perhaps in confirmation, perhaps not, but we nod and move on and I carry the bags of a little this, a little that and a something extra special for someone, who knows who, a just in case we are caught short and we never are, never will not while this dear heart is beating still.

 

And on our way we come to the birth, deaths and marriages church on the hill. The one we won’t be going to any day soon and don’t expect to again unless, unless and we ward off the inevitable with a slick-slick brush-brush flick-flick on-off and well, simulations or joy, or both. We haven’t been inside since, since - widows-weeds widows-weeds wither-wither-wither and we forget that now and it’s better that way and we won’t be going in there to be reminded and I forge on along the beaten track but she stops for a moment, looks up to the bell tower holding a wraith of a cloud passing the moon, slipping through from arc to arc, angle sky tolling silent the night and she listens, spell bound and I wait. Then, she gathers her steps, shuffles on, catches up and together again, one wise old woman and one fast becoming we link arms linked to bags full of delicacies, trinkets and charms and we wend our way home and the sky tolls silent the night.

 

And who knows the shape of soul - maybe moon? A slipped disc of pearl shine falling from angels weightlessly falling from grace, gracefully, weightlessly down through the shallows, through avalanches of glittering insincerities, deepest sympathies crashing through impenetrable barriers to an earth shattering crack, dropping heavenly hosts into that icy chalice of translucent light falling moon-soul-friend dropping through holy, holy night.  And we glance back but keep on moving, two owls gliding through dark air hooting hollow hallelujahs, gloria in excelcis deos, hooting hollow on the chill. December breeze blows a choir of wraith clouds and winter freezes still.

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Then home trumpets round the corner hark heralding two off-white faces spearing through the dark, bag laden wearies swooping in low to roost. I turn the key that opens the door that cranks the machine that sets everything twirling to an old familiar tune and this music box house begins to spin with life as we breathe ourselves deep into all that contains us, and the flick-switch lights trip and sparkle everywhere, even the darkest corners are lit.

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Blood red berries cluster in the pierce prickling holly wreath that hangs from a ribbon on the door that swings on its hinge between day and night, before it’s shut closed locking Christmas in for the duration, old bone plaguing drafts excluded. Curtains draw any linger of low hung sun to heel, to hearth, to dissolve to black as soot an empty grate and night begs in black cloth and ash only to hold holy the sky, holy and on high and day’s surrender slid long ago beneath the vanishing ache and yearning echo of yesterday and gloria in excelsis deo. 

 

Wilty limp weather worn winter coats cast off like second skins hang in abeyance in the dreary underworld of things to be ignored until absolutely necessary. Until the hissing insistence of New Year snakes round again.

We silhouette into the sparkly swirl, two figurines in some artistic display sprinkling nostalgia over reality’s carapace of pain abandoned and forgotten now in the blurry edges of obscurity.

 

Through a transparent glaze shiny flecks shimmer nervously between blinks of glimmery reminiscence and gentle reflection and our eyes all aglow impulsively transfer tiny yondering sparks, one to the other, and though it’s been said many times many ways with a twinkling nod we two starry-eyed followers of wonder sing hallelujah to the chime of an internal rhyme, sing to sighs sealed in stony cold tombs. Two wandering stars, deflecting winter’s gathering gloom. Royal hallelujahs. Merry. Bright. Singing constellations of guiding light and westward leading, nodding, proceeding we reverberate deep the echoing tones of winter’s eternal night.

 

We unfurl like banners in this intimate pageant of suspended life and joy, oh joy spills rapturously from bags brim full, tumbles into the parade, threads itself though the air, hangs and bobs, glistens and glints and pours itself so whole heartedly into the echo chambers of our swelling hearts and we nod and repeat the sounding joy, and repeat the sounding joy. And with cups full of good cheer and joy looping the loop we glide silky smooth on glad tidings right into the centre of things.

 

Nonchalantly my mother whirls a giddy waltz unleashing herself body and soul into the familiar embrace of the fire side chair, sinking into its trusted clutch, dissolving into every tatter, every tear of its worn out tapestry. Within seconds she nods off peaceful dozey like a bee sleeping on a flower and time, unburdened, weightless as a snowflake, freezes still at this, the appointed hour. Beyond darkness glaring, moon-shadow glowing, unbearable light, a fox shrieks, a bell rings out of sight. Then. Suddenly. With a shivery chill she shudders, crash landing bewildered, back into her empty shell and wintry skies echo endless uneasy goodbyes. Slivery fox disappears. Silvery moon drops enlightening sighs. And her eyes, her eyes, her eyes glassy still transfix a stare into the empty grate with its imploring unmerciful cries.

 

Fingers once needle straight, tangle twist as hawthorn branch possessed to lightly spin and weave the air, to catch and reach beyond grasping where budding tips entwine kindling twigs, bundle wrapped in fairy rags, cast like whispers beyond the sacred veil into the cradle of resurrected light. She blesses herself, strikes a match, begs distant intercessions to liberate, transform, ignite.

 

And all the while I gathering up the trappings of the day, humming holy hallelujahs, setting out a tray, an altar of libations, dainty offerings on display, a fountain pen, a stack of cards central to the array, each one an apostle carefully chosen for this day, appointed emissaries soon to be on their way. And smoky fire wood seepy curls wild scent into the trail, softening all the edgy sharp, smoothing out the rough, rids the room of chilly gloom, warms it just enough. Smokes into the shadows, smokes out things that lurk looking for idle hawthorn hands, twitching to be at work.

 

Nestling down in full communion two conspirators by the fire, dappling illumination’s strange desire, she in her shadowy cranny, me in my umber nook, mourning miracles performed unexpectedly on dark horizons where that first match was struck. Where heartache prowls in shrieks and cries and the air is thick with secret signs exchanged in hoots and glinting eyes between the wise, between the wise, and ancient dirges fill the skies and smoky haze stings our eyes and YES it’s time, we realise and she stokes the fire and we watch it rise. We watch it rise.

 

And flames glow wrap room wintery warm. Tinder sparks rage ablaze red roaring blooms. Fire bursting blossoms crackle and hiss and caught up in the frenzy we start to rejoice and transcendent incantations more ancient than knowing dance from forest charmed lips. And I pass the pen, through the glowing, into hawthorn’s beckoning grasp and whispery litanies leap the air echoing those heaped on horizons past.

 

Cards stacked in divine expectation promise to fulfil their happy merry salutations, to deliver, in the rush rush from heart to pen poised for translation, their joyful exaltations, to be inscribed, licked, stamped, flung to the four corners - to the four corners and beyond. Dispersing lonely roaming exiles of the night. Dispersing death’s dark shadows to flight. Rejoicing in cloud and majesty and awe and deep, deep light making safe way for blessed invocations, wild seeds heaven sent on winter’s breeze, hell bent on their destinations.

 

And names are chanted summoned to appear spellbound from flittered pages of a tattered address book well thumbed through the ages. Summoned to their sacred voyage from cold bleak manger sparked to light, to cast to the wind and out of sight all a nestling wild owl can impart without danger so late at night. And names are chanted, and eyes cast down. Names chanted, already flown and in their place little crosses, in memoriam, drawn on worn out tattered pages. ✚

 

And as hawthorn hands twitch restlessly we nod and we say that was a good day, wasn’t it?

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