To Revel, To Dream

"Supermoon" by C. Michelle Olson; http://cmichelleolson.com/

Our autumn/winter issue opens with the following paragraph:

"Amidst fundamental change, evolutionary transformation, emotional inheritances across generations, loss, decline and gain, we harvest by flame hues of the season what the preceding months have forged. Shifts in light, time and nature call for an introspective accounting of the shifts in our own lives. From the initial autumnal awakening wrought with realizations and all that we've accumulated, to the winter withdrawal for rest, repair, planning and dreaming, this issue compels us to embark on physical and emotional journeys of self-discovery. It's time to venture out into the dark heart of the unknown, embrace the mystery and revere the moment as we carve a way through."

Interestingly, in the ancient Celtic tradition, Halloween was regarded as the New Year. If we think of the harvest as having gathered the abundance of the year, all that we yielded, learned and received, if we think of winter as the quiet after, a gestation before the rebirth of spring when we start again, this time of year would seem an ending before a beginning. In-between cycles of seasons and life, should there not come a time after laboring, preceeding rest, to acknowledge and celebrate? The autumn opens the holiday season for many of us. Is it then not fitting that one and all should take time to recharge and reward themselves with love, light and laughter during this time? For all that we've lost, all that we've gained, for all that's changed, let us remember, take stock of who and what's most important and then lift a glass to the present. As the featured poem below rightly states, "All is done that can be done." Being done, let us revel and dream.   

Last Harvest

by Nancy Morgan-Boucher

Under the burnished bales of hay
under the prickled straw fields
covenantal crones bruise the leaves
of apple mint, crush the breathy wilding grapes
snatched from woody nightshade’s clasp;
decoct chokecherries to blackened flame.

Bid to sip, Demeter, to visions,
infusion of vervain for drowsiness.
Lord of the Underworld desires
Persephone again.  Lady of the Harvest, dream.
All is done that can be done.
Pull down the Full Corn Moon.


Bio- Nancy Morgan-Boucher lives in Rehoboth, MA where she founded Poetry in the Village in 2009 at the local library.  Morgan-Boucher has been a featured poet at Main Street Cafe, Easton, MA, Coffee Milano, Middleboro, MA, Blue State Coffee, Providence, RI, Mike Amado Memorial Poetry Series, Plymouth, MA, Dream-Speak, Plymouth, MA and Stone Soup, Cambridge, MA. Her work also appears in Finding Water: Poems and Stories by the Nomad Writers, 2011. She has recently read poetry from her chapbook, Climbing the Family Tree, on the sidewalk of the venerable pub, The Drunken Poet, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.  Morgan-Boucher's poems have appeared in Siren: A Contemporary Literary Journal, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, The Unitarian Universalist Poets: A Contemporary American Survey, Pudding House Publications, Jamestown, Ohio, and The Wilderness House Literary Review, an on-line literary magazine. Her work has recently been published by The Write Place At the Write Time, an online literary journal.