Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Halloween
By Don Iannone
















It's Halloween; that one day in the year
when it's ok to dress up as George Bush,
Hillary Clinton, Saddam Hussein,
or any other ghoul you'd like to be.
A Celtic holiday handed down to us,
over two thousand years ago, that
outlasted the many devilish efforts by the Vatican
to overthrow the spirited celebration.
Originally just seen as the boundary
between summer and harvest, and
the long brutally cold days of winter.
But also a magical time, when the boundary
between living and dead slipped away, creating
a fortuitous time for prophecy by the Druid priests,
looking for clues about what the future might hold.
Bonfires blazed, casting shadows all about,
creating the in-between world, that
the priests used as windows through time.
All danced in costumed mystery in that single eve,
when the light and darkness embraced in twilight shadows.
As we watch the last of the autumn leaves
free themselves from the trees, and
we awaken to the first dusting of snow,
we don masks, light candles, and
whirl in the streets as dervishes,
coaxing the unknown from lit jack-o'-lanterns
crying for release from the secrets they hold.

Happy Halloween!

6 comments:

Liz the Great said...

Beautiful. Its sad how many of us focus on our Judeo-Christian outlook at Halloween and end up focusing on the 'scariness' of it (no matter how delicious the feeling of forcing on a good scare might be.) You made it sound like a positive time as it should be. Oddly, I am actually finding it to be a source of comfort to me this year. Hard to explain why exactly though. :-)

Don Iannone, D.Div., Ph.D. said...

Liz...thanks. Enjoy your Halloween and take comfort in your jack-o'-lantern.

Margie said...

Wow Don...great poem!
Love it!
I love Halloweeen simply for all the little ghosts and goblins that come to my house...saying trick or treat!
Kids make Halloween a happy time for me!

Happy Halloween Don!

Margie

dumbdodi said...

This is only my second Halloween...and I really like this festival...I have kept loads of candies and change...and I always let kids trick me into treating them ;-)

Hey Don, I am officially off from blogging for most of the winter. I will miss you and your words a lot and I say that from my heart.

I wish you, your friends and family a very warm winter....bye for now

polona said...

haloween has no tradition in my country, seems like the vatican was powerful enough to impose november 1, the all saints' day as the prevalent holiday.
that's one of the reasons i love your poem.

Kathy Trejo said...

Its fun to dress up and be someone else for the night and eat chocolates and turn up the scary fright sounds with rattling chains and howling wolves and screaming witches...kids love it and the big kids too! LOL

Friends' Blogs