deepstepcomeshining:

Halloween

*

I have peeled the bark from the tree

to smell its ghost,

and walked the boundaries of ice and bone

where the parish returns to itself

in a flurry of snow;

*

I have learned to observe the winters:

the apples that fall for days

in abandoned yards,

the fernwork of ice and water

sealing me up with the dead

in misted rooms

*

as I come to define my place:

barn owls hunting in pairs along the hedge,

the smell of frost on the linen, the smell of leaves

and the whiteness that breeds in the flaked

leaf mould, like the first elusive threads

of unmade souls.

*

The village is over there, in a pool of bells,

and beyond that nothing,

or only the other verisions of myself,

familiar and starnge, and swaddles in their time

as I am, standing out beneath the moon

or stooping to a clutch of twigs and straw

to breath a little life into the fire.

*

John Burnside

3 months ago  /  1 note  /  Source: cultsofspeed