I.
It is the season of leaves falling, and dry husks gathered for the burning,
Used and dead, the life force passed as a torch,
The bearers of the sacred light
Relay the flame and then burn out,
Fulfilled.
It is the time of reckoning, remembering, returning to the earth
And giving thanks for the great bounty that is there,
The living vessels of the spark replenishing themselves
Upon the offerings of the dead.
Feel the moment,
The pulse, the beat ‘twixt Life and Death.
The balance point
Which opens the door between the worlds
Like the piercing of a veil …
What do you fear?
What comes, howling through the nightmares of your earthly concerns,
Scything on every side with impunity and seeming disdain,
Laying low love and hate alike,
Reaping the ripened heads from cherished ideas and dreams
Long held and dear?
And what do you believe?
What can protect and save you from the Harvester of Lives?
What holds you safe, coherent, in the icy blast that blows
Across the Void and chills your living blood?
What Ethic, what Philosophy, what God
Wins your reprieve?
II.
How shall you garb the thought of the Unthinkable?
The choice is yours.
The mortal mind must face the faceless form of the Ineffable,
Masking the invisible with shape and shadow,
Smoke and mirrors giving partial sight
When truth is blinding.
Shall primal fear be felt in all its fury and its pain --
The thrashing demon with the red-rimmed eyes
Slavering as it wraps its talons round its prey,
The dark goddess devouring the living creatures of the clay,
Her wizened priestess feeding the unwary from a poisoned bowl,
And riding the night sky against the moon?
Shall wraiths of regrets and might-have-beens
Bedevil us as stinging hordes of flies, and hold us captive
In a world of matter born but to decay?
Shall terror and a greater truth be kept at bay
With fairy tales, with wings of gossamer, and wands of power,
With beauty taming the rude beast within,
The shining spear piercing the darkness, the sword upraised
In noble art of war?
Shall we with unicorns and dragons play,
Enchanted, and enraptured by the twinkling lights
Of fair Titania’s bower?
Shall romance wrap us in its roseate mists, and with its wings
Enfold us in the dream
And carry us beyond the fearful night to golden dawn?
Shall we trade ghost for Spirit
Invoke Ideals -
and move beyond the merely mortal?
