ALL SOULS DAY

By Dominick Takis

The sun rises on All Souls Day.

All is quiet against the edges of its roseate significance.

Eyes pilot dawn

to pull up the drawn shades

in celebration of all that has gone before.

The first light comes like a vagabond

from out of the dark,

like a poet who’ll correspond

to every emerging rock and stranded moon sliver.

Seen from above, these forms are reflected,

while cloud cover shivers with the alchemy of expectation.

They’ll come like half-formed silhouettes

giving shape to the imagination, an indentation, a footprint

on the lunar dreamscape of sand.

It is there, with the shoreline accentuated in foam,

growing out of the soft glow of the sea

receding to the strength of morning,

transforming the shadow of mourning

the passing of loved ones

like mist in the hills growing further away.

On this day they are near to the hue as the sky breaks up the fear,

and the dark contours of thought are merely detours to steer through,

like a road hugging a cliff,

unforgiving if you’ll stray too close to the edge of a petrified flame,

this old weathered gray shaved

as dawn draws petroglyphs on the walls of the cave

to light the way.

Dominick Takis was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and educated in Boston. He’s a writer and consummate wanderer.

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