Poems for the Day of the Dead

Florence on horse, Griffith Park, 1928

 Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am,

you are someone I never knew
you stand under a tree
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved. )

You wave,
then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling

(as though you do not notice)

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not cosmetically renewed

and boxed, their faces familiar and serene.

Or brought to an essence, 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 somewhere, anywhere

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?

An imperishable 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?

                  Lauren Raine   1997

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, 

and keeps on walking

because of a church 

that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him
as if he were dead.

And another man,

 who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go

far out into the world

toward that same church,
which he forgot.

Rainier Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

         On Meeting Shari After 22 Years

I see your  father's  gesture
(how is it possible, to remember him, after all these years?)
yet there it is renewed, a play of shadow and light
 flickering across your face.

You were a Milagro
that inhabited me

for a little while 
and then grew on without me.

What shall I call this door,
opening today between our lives?

Multitudes have passed this way. 

For that moment
I see them in your eyes,
then I pay the bill, finish coffee,
and descend into the subway, waving goodbye.

How can I tell you
that I am casting my love
like a daisy with petals partly plucked,
a firefall of dandelion seed
into the wind
into the world

as you must do as well

Lauren Raine (1990)

Flora with Florence (1917)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

They are stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass,

ephemeral, half-glimpsed stories

lighter than air, 

these unknown memories

quietly escaping,
through 

an open window

Florence at 92

Ancestral Visitations.........a Samhain Portfolio

Getting ready for my annual Feast of Samhain, I found some old photos that were irresistable in their mystery and their pathos.  Wanted to remember, especially, the unknown Grandmothers who brought me here.  

Just a few "snapshots from the other side of Forever".............................

 http://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/ancestral-visitations-a-samhain-portfolio-40168014

Thank you.  Thank you all for bringing me here.

Ancestral Visitations

Florence on horse, Griffith Park, 1928

Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am, you are
Someone I never knew,
you stand under a tree,
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved. )

You wave,

then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling

(as though you do not notice)

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not cosmetically renewed
and boxed, their faces familiar and serene.
Or brought to an essence, 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 somewhere, anywhere
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?
An imperishable 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?

              Lauren Raine   1997

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands
somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him
as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go
far out into the world
toward that same church,

which he forgot.

Rainier Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

I see your  father's  gesture
(how is it possible, to remember him, after all these years?)
yet there it is renewed, a play of shadow and light
 flickering across your face.

You were a Milagro
that inhabited me

for a little while 
and then grew on without me.

What shall I call this door,
opening today between our lives?
Multitudes pass this way.  For that moment
I see them in your eyes,
then I pay the bill, finish coffee,
and descend into the subway, waving goodbye.

How can I tell you
that I am casting my love
like a daisy with petals partly plucked,
a firefall of dandelion seed
into the wind
into the world

as you must do as well?

Lauren Raine (1990)

Flora with Florence (1917)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass,

ephemeral, half-glimpsed stories

lighter than air, 

these unknown memories

quietly,
through 

an open window

Florence at 92

Everyday Poetry: Ancestors

Florence's Hands

I am not at Brushwood this year, celebrating the ritual cycles of Sirius Rising as I have in previous years, but they are on my mind. I've been having fun looking at old photographs I've inherited over the years.

Back in, I believe, 2003 Frank Barney and I dowsed the site that became the "Ancestor Mound" at Brushwood Folklore Center in Western New York.  Since then ashes and memorials have been left and held there, I am proud to say, and it is my hope that when my time comes my ashes also will be there, to return to the land and memory.

Here are are a few of my own contributions to the "Ancestor Mound" I might make, offering gratitude to

those who made my life possible 

through the threads of their own lives. One of these days, I'm going to put their stories down.......or at least, my imaginings and intuitions of their stories.

Here is my maternal Grandmother Helen, who died before I was born. How do you look at an old photo of a young life (in the height of fashion for her day) full of the dreams and fears of being so young.....and realize as you look, that life is already over, the story spun and re spun, and somehow, I am a part of the continuum, I carry that story forward whether I realize, respect, or know it at all.....and in some way that I will never understand?

All I really know about Helen is that she was a twin, she grew up in Los Angeles, and had she been born in another situation or another time, would probably have been an artist. In all her photos, Helen always looks sad. I think, like the tight, uncomfortable garments she had to wear, she may have felt terribly constrained by her life, never free to fully express herself, never free to dance. Perhaps, in some way, I've lived what she could not.

How can we not feel tenderness, looking at old photos, wondering at these stories? Below is a photo of maternal great grandmother Flora, holding my own mother as an infant.  And now that woman is 94 years old.