All Souls Night

Halloween comes mid way between two weekends, so this year I thought I'd bookend it with my Saturday poems, one spooky, one of grief for the departed - All Souls, followed by All Saints. This is the first, and it aims to be more impressionistic that anything, conjuring images of a haunted time of the year, and certainly with a hint of menace as well.

All Souls Night

The wandering spirits of the night
In Moon so full and bright and round
The shadows on the graveyard ground
Beneath the mound, there lurks a wight

The shipwreck rising, in mist so white
Full fathom deep, the sailors drowned
The wandering spirits of the night
In Moon so full and bright and round

Around the dolmen, flickering sprite
Shades of departed, now unbound
A hooting owl, the only sound
The chanting of a funeral rite
The wandering spirits of the night