Halloween

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
- Shakespeare (Macbeth)

Samhain : Honoring

Happy Anniversary to my mother's mother...lover of birds, poetry, magic and mischief.
And to my mother's father...the hellraiser who called her, "Bunny"....

Samhain by Annie Finch
(The Celtic Halloween)

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.

Apple Picking 2015 : A Necessary Autumn

"Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard..." - Robert Frost

I packed the picnic basket with mason jars filled with my Great Grandfather, Gabe Maletta's, magical soup and a loaf of pumpkin seed bread and Irish pasture butter. We went to the orchard for our annual picnic where we picked apples to make apple sauce for thanksgiving and a galette for breakfast. We dined al fresco with friends and sipped cider on our quilts while the vinegary scent of fallen apples filled the air and the bees were busy with a harvest of their own. We ate apple donuts and caramel apples for dessert and said hello to the one eyed horse and affectionate donkey. Then we took a spontaneous trip to the ruins of Beverly Mill. It was a perfect autumn, fun filled day.

(Thank you,  for this photo of me.)

Walk to School Day 2015

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” - Rumi