Poem for the Feast of All Souls

Today is the Feast of All Souls. You might be confused--didn't we just celebrate this holiday yesterday?

No, that was All Saints. All Saints was originally designed to honor the saints, those who had been beatified. Official saints, canonized by the Pope.

All Souls Day, celebrated the day after All Saints, was designed to honor everyone else who had died.

In some traditions, All Saints Day honors all the Christian dead, and All Souls Day honors those who have died in the past year. Those of you with excellent memories of your English major days may remember that Sir Gawain left for his adventure with the Green Knight on All Souls Day. Medieval audiences would have read a lot into that date of departure. As Sir Gawain leaves, his castle-mates would have been expecting to celebrate his life the following year.

It will surprise no one to find out that these holidays have inspired me to write all kinds of poems.  Here's one, inspired by my commuting days down to Miami in the early part of this century:

All Saints Day in the Metro


We ride the train,
flickering candles in this metal pumpkin,
weary souls wishing for a vacation.

Just yesterday, we’d have worn
our Halloween costumes, a window
to the selves we might have been.

Today, hardly a trace
of that festivity remains: a smudge
of make up, a trace of hair dye.

The young man leaps up.
We fully expect a gun
to come out of his case.

Bathed in the sunset,
he plays his violin.
Serene music lifts our spirits.

No longer haunted
by our tasks left half-completed,
we settle into the ride.

The train trundles north,

past urban blight and clogged rivers,

the skeletons of new condos straining to the sky.