Kerry Hardie

Samhain

You can feel the dead crowding.

In the fierce, low sun they’ve kept their distance:

light-fade and they flock like small brown moths

that dart and fall and crawl and rise and settle,

cloaking my shoulders with their soft, drab wings.

The great saints have their high appointed ritual.

This is a congregation of the parish dead,

local to these scattered fields and farms.