Poets United: Midweek Motif ~ A Million Years Howl When Voices Whisper Among The Trees

Autumn in the Forest ~ Pinterest 

“And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.” ~ Hermann Hesse

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.  It is as though they were traveling abroad.” ~ Marcel Proust

Midweek Motif

There is an indescribable feeling near the end of October that grows loud, so much so that the sounds surrounding it are muted and are dipped in shades of monochrome. 

All Hallows Eve is a holiday that is celebrated in several countries on 31st October. The holiday includes activities such as trick or treating, attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack o lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing and divination games. 

What’s interesting is that around the same time on November 1st ‘Dias de los Muertos’ i.e. The Day of the Dead is celebrated in central and southern Mexico. Though the holiday coincides with a Catholic holiday known as All Souls & All Saints Day, indigenous people have combined this their own beliefs. 

It’s a way for them to visit with family who have passed on to a better world and give them gifts. In some cultures a skull is a symbol of death as well as rebirth; a different way of looking at death which is what Halloween is all about. 

So, for Midweek Motif today, I invite you to write poetry and offer the following two options: 

1) Write a poem inspired by ghost stories, popular myths or legends that you might have heard or narrated over the years. Feel free to address what sends chills down your spine.

2) Or, if your muse prefers something different, write a poem about remembrance in the spirit of 'Dias de los Muertos' i.e. The Day of the Dead. Let us honor our loved ones.

Add the direct link to your poem to Mr Linky. Remember to visit others and to comment on their work. I look forward to reading what you all come up with. 🍣

And You As Well Must Die, Beloved Dust

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

And you as well must die, beloved dust,

And all your beauty stand you in no stead;

This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,

This body of flame and steel, before the gust

Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,

Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead

Than the first leaf that fell, —this wonder fled.

Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.

Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.

In spite of all my love, you will arise

Upon that day and wander down the air

Obscurely as the unattended flower,

It mattering not how beautiful you were,

Or how beloved above all else that dies.

Corpse Flower 

by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal 

Yesterday, the final petal curled its soft lure into bone.

The flowerhead shed clean, I gathered up your spine

and built you on a dark day. You are still missing

some parts. Each morning, I curl red psalms into the shells

in your chest. I have buried each slow light: cardinal’s yolk, live seawater,

my trenza, a piece of my son’s umbilical cord, and still you don’t return.

A failure fragrant as magic. Ascend the spirit into the design.

My particular chiron: the record that your perfect feet ever graced

this earth. Homing signal adrift among stars, our tender impossible longing.

What have I made of your sacrifice. This bone: it is myself.

All Hallows
by Louise Gluck

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.

Autumn Rain ~ Pinterest 

 (Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ Authenticity)