Ruminations on Samhain

I haven't posted anything since mid July.  Two rejection letters of a submission including a deeply felt poem about my deceased mother, " Pantoum for an Apple Tree," had a depressive effect.  Doubts about my poetic abilities followed me around like a rain cloud.  But, recent happenings have led me to believe that I still have many poems within me and an ideal place to write them.  My brother, Jim, and I moved to an independent  / assisted living facility.  We have a lovely small cottage surrounded by many mature trees.  In the meantime, I was prodded to share the following sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay and some thoughts it induced in me.

I came across an essay on Edna St.Vincent Millay by my "Writing the Spiritual  Journey" workshop leader, Randon Noble.  Randon is a kindrid spirit in spite of being years younger than I.  Her teaching style is a gentle and sympathetic drawing out from the often murky depths of the proverbial well.  It enabled me to discern the trajectory of my life which proved to be a revelation; so many moments of grace which were finally recognizable in the crazy quilt patterns of living.  I love this particular excerpt:

"The apples were small and hard and each the size of a small plum.  They were crisp and tart but sweet enough to enjoy – much like Millay, perhaps.  While the playwright finely sliced them, making little armadillo humps in the crust, I read from a collection of Millay’s poems.  They were a little rough to take all at once, and none had anything to do with apples or tarts (not in the culinary sense, anyway).  But I had been working on an essay that explores hauntedness, and it was my last night at the Colony, and I still felt vaguely unsettled by the shrine-like quality of Steepletop.

Sonnet XLIII deeply impressed me:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply …
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what rickbirds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more."

I have always loved this particular poem -  even more so now that my long summer has passed.  Millay's images are so achingly true.  Yet, I find them strangely comforting.  The listening ghosts and the lonely tree, who knows her boughs are empty now, are still seeking; they haven't given up.  Rather, they are waiting.  Samhain, the Celtic winter, draws me in now as age and progressing Parkinsonism slow my pace.  It's a time for ruminating, but in a larger sense it's a time for looking forward, no matter how near one's physical end may be.  Now my body is like the stark winter landscape with its skeletal trees and mouldering leaves.  But, within the frozen earth that gave them birth lies the dormant potency of their resurrection and mine as well.  Who knows what form it will take?  What a wondrous question to ponder on a snowy afternoon.

I love the Celtic cycle of the year because of its closeness to the earth and all its creatures.  To the ancient ones it was a sacred place.  I find it so also.