arethinn | autumnvent interlude - Halloween leftovers (Reply)

Jack Image Set by ~jordannamorgan on deviantART
(35 icon-sized and 5 large images, various jack-o'lantern faces)

the voices of the dead.
are you with me, grandfather?
do you hear me, spirits of the past?
is the night hurrying because of you?

the answers are not in unhoped for words
but the images of night: the cloak,
the stillborn wind ripping brown leaves,
rain on the sidewalk, clay earth
becoming mud, mute stars,
the tree sighing as it dies, the ending
of the day, the halo of dawn,
the nighttouch, the wolves’ howl,
the heart, the soul of the dark.

--from "All Hallows" by Art Durkee (scroll down)

Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite
All are on their rounds to-night,-
In the wan moon's silver ray
Thrives their helter-skelter play.

Fond of cellar, barn,or stack,
True unto the almanac,
They present to credulous eyes
Strange hobgoblin mysteries.

--from "Hallowe'en" by Joel Benton

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.

--from "Samhain" by Annie Finch

33 Halloween/Samhain icons by