Hedgerider's Lament~Part IV

The Hedgerider's Lament
Part IV: Samhain Sestina

The harvest grain is thin and sere, the barren cattle half dead

with want of it, shadows not meat hung on their poking bones.

The starving rat is under the straw. Two dogs meet it in the night;

one barks, the other silent grabs its neck and shakes out red.

The hollowed return hungry from the wars where they were lost,
trading bedlam's bright blood for pandemonium's gaudy hour.

Senses shun the hedgerow's bloom, calcified grey in a headstoned hour:

sandburr, bullnettle, goathead, thorns all sharper the longer they’re dead.

The crouched purple aster's maze unpurls to pad them in a battle lost

to puncturing, blue eyed tears disjected over the tracing of summer’s bones.

None can say who'll see the winter out or even one more sunset’s red

downbedded on the grass, when the sun’s head is spiked this night,

a jack o lantern by bonfires built to feed, to frighten night,

to burn the past and with its heat push back the cold coming hour.

Slaughter’s remains make spirit suppers, as hopes and sins flare red.

Bring out the warding masks, for we’re face to face with all our dead

searching in the circling, finding framed in flame the bloody bones

of that which dies for us; flowers, lovers, friendships,years and memories lost.

Every other fire now lies dead upon the hearth, heat and virtue lost

to be made anew. I tend the futile telling in the ghostdance parade of night

peeling the apples, watching the crows, rolling the knucklebones

to say how the favors will fall, what black or golden hour

stand bare, danced out before us on this night owned by the dead

and only borrowed, where every fortune told is washed in red.

All things in the flames fly up; the shadow finds us still in that red-

drench bath. Balefires burn high against the sum of all that’s lost;

I feel you push on the thinning skin with that crowd of grinning dead,

your barkbrown eyes black pits in a skull that prisons night.

I set candles in the west window at the witchwind's darkest hour

to burn, to beckon, and to grieve your moving bones.

So many times I’ve called but never do any tumbled bones

cross over, though your table’s set with summer wine red

in the cup, ringed with daisies. I’ve sat through the last ashen hour

playing your blue tune, danced an old dance over what can’t be lost.

From the corner a mummied cricket rubs its broken legs all night

in a threnody to send you back to the thankless work of being dead.

What is it you have to tell across the void in this hour of the lost?

Your disappearing bones are a scrawled sign, blood ink of deepest red

glowing against the scroll of night, read only by the dead.

 October 2011



Posted for    OpenLinkNIght   at dVerse Poets Pub

You can find the earlier poems in the Lament series, Parts I-III  here

Process Notes: Samhain (pronounced sau-win) is a Gaelic harvest festival and festival of the dead originating in pre-Christian Ireland, associated with the last harvest, the end of summer and the Celtic New Year, the slaughtering of livestock for winter, bonfires(balefires) both of purification and where the bones of the slaughtered cattle were burned, 'guising' in masks and costumes to mingle safely among the dead, who are said to be at their closest to the living world at this time, and divination for the upcoming year. It was and in some places still is celebrated on the last day of October and first of November, and is considered the progenitor of our present day Halloween.