October 28: My Daughter's Dream, Annie Finch, "Samhain"

Some day last week, my daughter told me about a dream she had about my sister who died last year.

My daughter was very close to my sister.  Until she got sick, my sister always spoiled her beyond spoiling.  On Halloween, a pumpkin filled with my daughter's favorite candy, video games, DVDs, one time a Nintendo Game Boy.  On Christmas, a heap of presents that spread across the entire living room floor.  Easter, a laundry basket of white chocolate rabbits and jelly beans and more DVDs and video games.  My sister loved spoiling her.

In the dream my daughter told me about, my sister came to her.  Played games with her, "just like old times," my daughter said.  It was almost as if my sister wanted to have one final time to spoil my daughter.  I could tell this dream made my daughter really happy.

In Ireland, the Celtic holiday of Samhain was the predecessor to modern Halloween.  Samhain was a time when the threshold between the real world and spirit world was easier to cross.  The souls of dead relatives were able to return to their former homes, seeking hospitality.  Feasts were held, with place settings for the dearly departed.  It was a festival of life and death.

Maybe there was a little Samhain in my daughter's dream last week.  My sister returning home to have a little party with her.

That gives Saint Marty a little comfort.

Samhain

(The Celtic Halloween)

by:  Annie Finch

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.