We

We,
the modern people,
suffer the dusk,
challenge the night,
anticipate the dawn,
hoard the day.

We are divided from wholeness.
We are alienated from the holy.
We are strangers before the sacred.

Our souls 
are uncomfortable in our skins.
We are,
made ourselves,
allowed ourselves to become
prisoners
locked away from 
the wonder, wisdom, wildness
of earth and sky.

Our ancestors would not recognise us
as their relations,
because we are not related 
to the world around us,
the world that surrounded them.

Though we have maps,
GPS and satnavs,
we are lost,
we have wandered
far off the path
of authentic being.

For without gadgets and gimmicks,
our ancestors knew where they were,
they knew their place,
could find their way
to what mattered most.

They,
the ancient ones,
awaited the dusk,
respected the night,
relished the dawn,
cherished the day.

Samhaintide

Prepare now
for the Samhaintide
make ready
for the delicate dawns
the diaphanous dusks
are upon us.

They will not last long,
these daybreakings
these nightfallings,
before we realise
all will return to what
we know well
and cope with better.

As the light shrinks itself
making room for expanding darkness,
when the constellations
more brightly dance
singing across the star strewn sky,
we keep the Samhiantide.

Out the corner of the eye,
was that a shimmer,
a swiftly darting energy
manifested momentarily,
the shadow stealthily
moving as a cloud across sky?

Barely audible
almost beyond our hearing,
was that thrumming,
the muffled chanting of the ancestors,
just the comfortable side of discordant,
who no longer sing in our harmonies
whose melodies grate the senses?

Yet, yet the sight of them fills
us with wonder and reassurance,
their musics astonish offering us solace,
we do not know how
it is possible for us to understand.

Samhaintide,
prepare to encounter what
we do not expect and accept
what we embodied
do not now understand.

The mystery of death,
the other birth
shrouded until the last moments,
and let us not wait until death is upon us,
to embrace and be embraced by
the reality we are not alone
either in our living or our dying.

Open and let go,
prepare now
for the Samhaintide
make ready
for the delicate dawns
the diaphanous dusks
are upon us.

They will not last long,
these daybreakings
these nightfallings,
before we realise
all will return to what
we know well
and cope with better . . .
unless we choose
a different way of being.