Selections from "The Wheel: Poems of the Celtic Year"

Sara Ellen Shank

Samhain (Halloween)

Immortality

She must have known,
in the rooted way trees know,
must have known to give me a leaf,
a small thing,
traced with the stained-glass beauty
of her soul,
in autumn reds and mottled green
edged with gold,
Must have known this would be the day
before the winds came, and ice,
to leave her graceful body broken
on cold earth,
her soft heart splintered,
her insects frozen.

Yule (Winter Solstice)

Birthing

The land awaits me--
Bony hands that trees rattle to the sky
still clutch May-day ribbons in wind-bitten tatters
calling me back to life.

Women weave warm wool blankets against the cold,
singing songs of summer to warm their children
with the memory of light,
to sing themselves through this longest of nights,
singing me back to life.

The night draws a dark breath from the sky
pauses for a pregnant black moment,
then sighs in grey,
finally releasing a day
longer than the one before,
bringing me back to life.

Midsummer (Summer Solstice)

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning

The universe is round,

And all things within it.

There is no end of the rainbow,

No end of the world,

No end of life.

We know when we awaken

That sleep will return

And when born, that we will die.

The rainbow meets the horizon

And there we think it ends

Because we can see no further.

And so we sleep, we die,

No knowing that night always passes

And morning will always come.

In the way of the moon

We wax and wane

Yet, like the moon, always retain

Our essence.

In the way of the sun

We rise and fall and rise

In birth and death

We open and close our eyes.

Such is the way of all things.

But there is a time between times—

A time between day and night,

A shade beween black and white.

It is the place of first breaths

And the place where we breathe our last.

It is a joy so sharp it becomes death

And a pain so deep it becomes life.

They are two edges on the same sword

And two handles on the same cup.

It is at these places between

That we see the greatest truths.

At noon on the longest day

We see the death of the Summer King

As he leaps in the dance of days,

We will see the setting of the sun,

And the moon will rule her time.

But in the darkness of the longest night,

When black winter gives birth to light

The end of the beginning

Will begin to end again.