Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Halloween, or Celebrating the Dead

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Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a  special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special  feel because it was All Hallows' Eve.

― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

“So light a fire!" Harry choked. "Yes...of course...but there's  no wood!" ...  "HAVE YOU GONE MAD!" Ron bellowed.  "ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT!” 

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition 

take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn't afraid of facing challenges. 

― Paulo Coelho

We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.

― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: 

The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

Midweek Motif ~ Halloween 
or Celebrating the Dead

(31 October ― 2 November)

Your Challenge:  Show your truth about this holiday in a poem that tells a story.

Is Halloween a children's holiday, as marketed in the USA?

Trick-or-treating

A Wiccan or Witches' New Year?

Oweynagat ('cave of the cats'), one of the many 'gateways to the Otherword' from whence beings and spirits were said to have emerged on Samhain.

All Saints Day and/or The Day of the Dead?  

On All Hallows' Eve, Christians in some parts of the world visit graveyards to pray and place flowers and candles on the graves of their loved ones.

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Something else?   Show your truth about this holiday in a poem that tells a story. 

For those who are new to Poets United:  

1. Post your Halloween, or Celebrating the Dead poem on your site, and then link it here.
2. If you use a picture include its link.  
3. Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
4. Leave a comment here.
5. Visit and comment on our poems.

(The next Midweek Motif will be Bonfires.)

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Poets United Mid-Week Motif ~ Mirror

“The time will come when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome.” 
― Derek Walcott, Sea Grapes

Today’s motif: Mirror

What do you see when you look in a mirror?  What is the best mirror you ever looked in? Do you have a mirror story that needs a poem?

I am inspired today by Agha Shahid Ali and Sylvia Plath:

I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror

  by Agha Shahid Ali

     By dark the world is once again intact,

     Or so the mirrors, wiped clean, try to reason. . .

                                                 --James Merrill

This dream of water--what does it harbor?

I see Argentina and Paraguay

under a curfew of glass, their colors

breaking, like oil. The night in Uruguay

is black salt. I'm driving toward Utah,

keeping the entire hemisphere in view--

Colombia vermilion, Brazil blue tar,

some countries wiped clean of color: Peru …

- See the rest at 
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16090#sthash.05S3zAB8.dpuf



Mirror
by Sylvia Plath (from The Collected Poems)

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike ...

- See the rest at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/172450-i-am-silver-and-exact-i-have-no-preconceptions-whatever

Please:

1. Post your mirror poem on your site, and then link it here.
2. Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
3. Honor our community by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

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