Poems for Long Nights

Descension | Dreaming | Shadow | Meaning

We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew tree
Are of equal duration.

Chorus:

And all shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T S Eliot

(We Die With The Dying, from Little Gidding, the fourth quartet of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets)

What once was green... Niwot, Colorado.

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My dear kin,

If this is your new year, may it be a blessed one. A grounded one. An expansive one. A year where you surprise yourself with just how kind you can truly be. A healed one. A marvelously magical one. A year of blessings dropping from your tongue like syrupy crystals, offering wellness and connection with every word, every smile, for every human, every cloud, and every tree you pass. A year of hope. A year of love. A year of giving and humility and responsibility for your dear soul and this strange human walk. A year of peace.

As within, so without.

As above, so below.

Peace.

Peace, for I will not rage at this world.

I will offer blessing, listening with the ears of my whole body, expanding my arms towards others until I might, even for a flashing instant understand what happened to a life/within a lineage that that resulted in humans seeking to undertake harm and destruction. What depth of wounding is this, this human-ing? What depth of fear and pain?

I will not rage at this world.

For rage is easy, even lazy. It is infinitely harder to love. To steward souls who passed before their time across the ways while we comfort those who grieve their loss, to keen with every cell of my being, every drop of my knowing. To ask for blessing upon all who suffer, all who suffer, and to mean it.

To seek connection as effortlessly as the quiet roots of mugwort searching across dry soils, and hyphae branching softly and endlessly across the horizons of this sacred world.

To walk as one who, despite violence and abuse, neglect and cruelty, despite poverty and fear, abandonment and projection, still stands and seeks the water to share and the stories to carry. Who still, despite every attempt by the zeitgeist to disintegrate into difference looks towards the high teachings, and pulls herself up upon its sharp and cold path, and walks inwards along the spiral of connection, though the way is windy, the signposts worn, and the light is dimming.

We have all suffered and so many continue to. This simple truth once lit in the mind-fires of humanity has the potential to illuminate nations and histories when coupled with the kindling of compassion, of course. We are kin through our living, our loving, our suffering, and our sacrifices. And yes, all have sacrificed something.

Unyielding kindness. Infinite compassion. Lessons from both the acorn and the squirrel, the cresting wave, and the basking shark.

Can this be our way?

Can this be our way?

As the days recede and the nights expand, and as we enter this gorgeous liminality that doesn’t arrive in a thunderous roar but slowly thins, I sit with my ancestors of blood and star and branch and fin and ask them to stay a while, and, goddess willing, to help me deepen even further into the strange wilds of human mysteries. I sat with a descendant too, my beloved niece. She is wise beyond measure, her spirit beautiful beyond reason. She is free and exploring and joins me on quiet occasions to share some of what she has seen, and some of what she knows. I will make a place for her at my table (on true Samhain, Nov 6th this year) and hope she will return and stay a while, joining me and other ancestors in celebration of the thinning veils and each other.

I miss her, especially at this time of year.

Life, so sacred, so strange. So wonderful, so rotten. So confusing, so untethered.

Life.

My ancestors once carved swedes (neeps/turnips/rutabagas) to make lanterns at this time of year. Gathering last harvests, preparing winter foods, lighting fires, and celebrating the new year born into darkness. The Cailleach, her name was called (is still called) as she returns from her summer slumber to take her place on the thrones of winter, our Winter Witch, our Queen of the Weather. Our veiled one. Creatrix. Beira. Her stories are endless, timeless, and stitched into the battered coasts and boggy hills of Alba and Eire.

Perhaps you have you sat with a Queen of Winter before?

Perhaps you have felt her ancient, primordial wisdom stretch out over peaks and waters like fingers of scalding ice, calling you into stillness for this is the time of dreaming and rest?

Perhaps she has visited you in your dreams, a flash of a raven’s eye, the swift jump of a deer through the forest, or perhaps the chilled breath of a she-wolf lifting the small hairs of your neck as your eyes get heavy and your head dives towards the realms of dreaming. There are stories that say when the Cailleach’s reign began, she could be seen riding through the sky on the back of a wolf. On stormy nights she would wander the countryside singing a sorrowful song, striking down any signs of green and growth with her blackthorn staff that contained the cold of winter, such that wherever it hit the ground, nothing would grow. As Spring rose, and with it, the light, she would then hide the staff under a holly bush, until the dark returned and her power rose again.

The Cailleach Awakens - Samhain (by Tom Langhorne)

I awaken with the setting of the

hazy, white Sun

The otherworld, invisible to you, starts to appear

I stretch out my hand.. And tighten my grip upon the land.

I am the falling golden leaves, the mushroom.

I am the sigh of the sleeping mist above the loch, the frost.

I rule over Winter, I bring with me a tribe of your ancestors.

Who will share their wisdom, for a Dram.

I am the last harvest,

With a hammer, I strike the grass beneath the Holly.

I am death,

And I will take what is needed to be taken,

To clear space for new life.

The Cailleach | From the Celtic Goddesses, Witches, and Queens Oracle by Danu Forest and Dan Goodfellow

I honor those who grieve the end of the sun’s strength. I was once one of those people. I understand the joys of heat and Vitamin D and trees covered in leaves and flowers and then fruits, bees and birds, and life humming dutifully and beautifully around us. I understand, truly, and if you are grieving, I hope you can find a landing place inside of the soul womb that is the dark half of the year. May soups and stories hold your hands as the wheel turns, and may the stars shine brightly for you.

I have been grieving the loss of winter since she left completely at Beltane, and I find myself sighing on walks, humbled by the splendor of the autumnal colors and the winter songs I hear the trees singing as they change and go within. Filled with absolute wonder and delight by each raindrop and each russet leaf, I can’t imagine a more beautiful time of year. These treasures are some of nature’s high teachings, offered to all of us, and are worthy of our gaze and meditation.

I love this Samhain Spell by Donald L. Engstrom. It takes courage to drop fully into its meaning, and yet, every time I speak it aloud, I notice it resonates more and more deeply within me.

A Samhain Spell

May all that is hidden be revealed!

May the emerging truths inspire us to shameless acts of beauty and compassion!

May the ancestors nurture the living.

May the living nurture the dead.

May new life be born into abundance and love.

May the emerging truths inspire us to shameless acts of beauty and compassion!

May all that is hidden be revealed!

I also love, love, love this Samhain poem and read it regularly throughout the season, hoping to have it fully memorized soon, living in my bones, honoring our once oral tradition, my new year’s commitment it to begin to embody the stories and lore in a way where I can be a true lore-keeper in addition to story weaving, and offer its wisdom with the strength of the bards of old…

Reds and grays and speckled treasures close to my home in Colorado.

Samhain, by Annie Finch.

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.

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A Blessing for Samhain

In honor of the Cailleach,

May your beloved dead be welcomed at your table, a place set for them, offerings left for them, a wee dram, a piece of their favorite pie or fruit;

May your beloved dead know what it is to hear their name spoken by the living, may their souls shine knowing they are remembered by some who still walk on this plane, love moving across the veils, to spark the places where their heart once moved;

May your beloved dead be invited to share their wisdom and their humor, their memories and their songs, may you sing them loudly, with gusto, in their memory;

May all you hold dear, whether living or otherwise, be blessed by this glowing liminality, hands held across the thresholds, tears shed across the veils, and may the dreaming time offer you space to rest, to winter the oceans of your thinking mind, such the only movement within you is the clunk of giant icebergs meeting on salty seas shading goblin sharks as they undulate slowly in the black ancient depths of your silenced being;

May this sunsetting time of year and its hilltop fires of celebration invite you into even greater connection with your kith, kin, and community.

Your shadow-cloaked, poetry-soaked, wild-loving, kin,

Heather Louise

How to sunset at sunset...I fell upwards into the glow of these leaves… Niwot, Colorado.

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Delights from Our Substack Community…

• The Cailleach | The Witch Is Coming by Jen Murphy, is a gorgeous offering sharing lore and wonder (always) from the Irish Tradition.

• The Cailleachs Cosmic Eye. A Primordial Ritual of Life, Death and Renewal by Jude Lally, is a beautiful offering of one of the Cailleach’s stories of transformation from Scotland.

• Reclaiming Halloween | Beyond sugar and plastic body parts: advice from 3 experts by Rayann Gordon, is a wonderfully honest offering from a deeply connected, spirit-working parent, seeking to reclaim the old traditions away from its obscured modern permutations.

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Celebrate with Animisma

True Samhain this year falls on November 6th (the cross-quarter day between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice), so you have some time yet to celebrate the season! There are two episodes devoted to this gorgeous time. You can find Animisma on your favorite podcast app, on Substack, and on my website here.

May the transformative blessings of Samhain be yours.