Samhain/Dia de Los Muertos

https://youtu.be/5k8EU4TeBXM?si=FGefrjft-SlZOxLw

It's that time of the Year Circle again............when the spiral spins into the darkness of winter, and the veils between the worlds are thin, and we remember the Beloved Dead. I want to share some images and the beautiful music of the Spiral Dance, which was just danced in San Francisco by Reclaiming; this beautiful ritual I myself participated in a number of times, and created many sacred masks for. "The Circle Has No End". If the video link above doesn't work, follow:   http://reclaimingspiraldance.org/

From the Dia de los Muertos Shrine I, my students, and the Faculty
 at Wesley created last year as Wesley Theological Seminary in D.C.

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not corpses,

cosmetically renewed and boxed,

their faces familiar and serene.

Or pale ashes

in elegant canisters.

 

I ask for the other dead,

those ghosts that wander

unshriven among our sleep,

haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,

The failed loves.

The quests,

undertaken with full courage

and paid for in blood

that never found a dragon,

a Grail, a noble ordeal

and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork

was somehow taken, or the road

wandered aimlessly,

finally narrowing to a tangled gully

and the Hero was lost,

in the gray and prosaic rain,

hungry, weary, to finally stop

glad of bread, a fire,

a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?

Were they mourned?

Did we hold a wake,

bear flowers,

eulogize their bright efforts

their brave hopes

and commemorate their loss with honor?

A poem? A stone to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth

to nourish saplings yet to flower,

the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander

in some unseen bardo,

unreleased, ungrieved.

Did we turn our backs

on them unknowing,  

their voices calling, 

whispering impotently behind us 

shadowing our steps?

                     (1997)