Season of the Witch (2021)

The holiday season gets under way today (unofficially but practically) with a collection of moments: Samhain, a Gaelic festival celebrating harvest and the transition into Winter dates to the Neolithic with the first written references in the 9th Century CE. All of today's Halloween rituals and many associated with Dia de los Muertes appear to have been received from Samhain. The Catholic Church co-opted the holiday and named it All Saint's Day. Salem, Massachusetts now celebrates a month long “Festival of the Dead.”

Speaking of witches:

Eventually October Sunday

Writing dreaming of some where

else this bar becomes too real:

Laughter mates with familiar paper,

wet napkins, depression, and the onset of winter.

Last leaves from the only oak let go at the quick,

soggy effusions from some witch's fingernails:

fly past the window like words in Halloween songs

in the minds of goblin dwarves.

— by James Allen Bethel, in Poetry Quarterly, Summer 2021, Prolific Press.