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For this Halloween season, I wrote four poems: two sestinas and two villanelles. One of each poetic form expresses the holiday in the contemporary and ancient senses. In other words, one sestina and villanelle are for the current ideas surrounding Halloween, and the other poetic pair covers the older traditions of Samhain that predate Christianity. So, there is old and new for each poetry formation.
At first, it was just going to be one sestina. I looked back on a sestina I wrote in college, titled, “The Skeleton Key.” I was confused when I noticed it did not fit the poem’s standard formation, which I researched. If I had made that type of error, my professor who was quick to criticize would have been on it like white on snow. After some contemplation, I recalled that the professor intentionally changed the rules because it was an intro course. The student was free to choose the order of end words, but the stanzas could not have repeat placements, and all six words could be anywhere in the envoy at the end. Since the format has become its own variation, I would like to call it an Edelman, after my professor.
This time I wrote the sestinas in the traditional format, and I independently learned to write villanelles long after graduation. The following are my poems, and I hope you enjoy reading them. The Sestinas come first, and then the Villanelles. Thematically, the Halloween ones come first and then the Samhain verses.
The Revered Eve Kept Aglow
With Autumn long broken, the hickory air haunts,
and the heat of daylight is now a ghost
of the waning sunlight casting a spell in the waxing dark.
Friendly faces are now guarded by masks,
traversing streets with footprinted webs,
and greeted by carved pumpkins aglow.
The revered eve weathered through centuries but kept aglow
by children romping, with our memories haunting.
Nightmares melt into chocolate webs
as people portray their opposites, as children are ghosts.
The soul is free behind the shield of a mask,
and whispers are louder in the dark.
The more the nights grow darker,
The more the pumpkins glow.
Until the sun rises, can the dancer be unmasked.
For now, identities unknown in the masquerade haunt
minds like cauldron apples bobbing for skin ghosts.
Is it depth or merely corn on the cobwebs?
Nature decorates with spider webs
that get stepped on in the dark.
We scarcely see a ghost,
Outside of stories around the bonfire aglow,
Yet they still haunt
the superstitious, with or without a mask.
Visitors donning jeweled masks,
Casting giggle webs,
Approach an abandoned, once loved haunted
house, mocking the darkness
that dares to obliterate the glow
of the dwelling ghosts.
Dwelling within, loners watch films of ghost
stories, enjoying dangers masked
by a screen that glows.
Plots link to new tales, like a web
of lies that don’t cut in the dark,
but screams echo until haunting.
The glowing moon casts a ghost upon the ground,
Guiding the haunting spirits who don masks,
Lurking for one night, the web of time darkens.
Midautumnal Candlelight
Betwixt the realms exists the veil,
Unthickening in the sparkling darkness of midautumn.
Nightfall cloaks the sacred candles
With cold shades of dusk whilst spirits
Of ancestors crossover to talk past death
In the third harvest.
Apples, corn, and pumpkins are harvested,
and carved to guard against evil past the veil.
Passed are those who reached death,
with loving backward gazes in Autumn.
Praying in circles, we whisper to the kindred spirits,
Well willed, casting spells with candles.
Solemn is the air around the candles,
Reaping the physical crops and the ethereal entities harvested
By time itself, the wheel of the year, the spirits
Sing through the glittering veil
The dancing fire matches the leaves in this autumn
Eve, where life meets death.
Believing gives the living hope after death.
Cold rhythms flicker the candles
We are reminded that life is ephemeral in Autumn
Years, in the cut vegetables we harvest,
and as the waning thickness even in darkness, secrets are unveiled.
No one lives in the graves, known by the spirits.
To the ancestors, we drink fermented spirits,
Embracing life before we’re embalmed by death,
Reuniting on the other side of the veil.
Wishing upon annual candles
Brings peace and hope in this cyclical harvest.
We bask in the midst of Autumn.
Dreams tend to be thicker by Autumn,
and the wind carries words to beloved spirits.
At the end of the harvest,
There is no end to death.
The wax wanes downward upon dripping candles.
Night ends, and light ascends again, but remaining still is the veil.
Harvest moonlight glows well with the hickory autumn air
Unveiled is my heathen hair, we’re spirited to a spiraling dance.
Death does not snuff out candlelight – life has meaning in every chance.
Gallivanting Revelers
There they go, parading in costume.
Door to door, they do not fool,
Collecting candy in the gloom.
Waltzing around the room
Adorned masks with jewels,
There they go, parading in costume.
Vampiric bride and skeleton groom
Unite with the village ghoul,
Collecting candy in the gloom.
Skyward on the witch’s broom,
Craving company after stirring cauldron gruel.
There they go, parading in costume.
Masquerading with peacock plumes,
Feeling the brisk breezes cool,
Collecting candy in the gloom.
Never fearing ghosts from the tomb,
Nor dreading werewolf’s drool.
There they go, parading in costume,
Collecting candy in the gloom.
The Hallowed Veil
On the other side of the veil,
The fallen and the living can reunite.
We meet and part on this trail.
Circle cast, and candles lit despite gales,
Nothing blows out the light
On the other side of the veil.
Recanting ancestral tales,
Astral entities may overhear midflight.
We meet and part on this trail.
Quicker than a nightingale,
Rhythmic messages sent, spelled with insight,
On the other side of the veil.
Clinking goblets of seasonal ale,
Catching warmth of the bonfire light
We meet and part on this trail.
The aether thins and the stars gleam pale,
Wise crafters speak to parted loved ones in rite
On the other side of the veil,
We meet and part on this trail.
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