Altar-facts**

Each October, I take them down

Off the altar made of shelf

Setting round the table

As a centerpiece of beloveds

Nested here old & young

in kitchen table nook

As if October brings them closer

With Halloween, day of dead

All Saints’ Day, Samhain

As if setting the table

with our dead brings their arrival

As if the decorations of cedar, bells,

lights, candles brings the holidays

As if the proximity of altar-facts

Nestles them even deeper

in our hearts…

It is said the veil

Is thinner at this time

This time of remembrance

This time of conversation

With spirits,

This time of welcoming them in

Around the table

Centerpieces of beloved ancestors

As if the trees loosing

their beloved leaves, this natural time

to remember loss & leaving

And yet they remain each&everyday

all year round—

As nowhere and everywhere

As close as breath and as far as stars

As nested and released

As love and eternal spirit

None of these sacred objects;

these altar-facts of a life once lived

None of these hold the impossible paradox 

of a love so deeply intimate

and so abundantly universal

Yet with our intention and attention

They become like sacred art

An expression of this beloved life

As both the beholder and beheld,

May they comfort us in our grief

Nesting us and releasing us

May the altarfacts as centerpieces

Help us give rise to our creative attention

May the ritual of our remembrance

Give ease and peace with the forever

Turning of time, our impermanence

And when the altar-facts go back up on the shelf May they carry a bit more of the burden in our hearts and shine forth a bit more joy each time—

May they become ART-i-facts

**altar-facts; a neologism of mine (from altar and artifacts)to mean any physical item holding meaning and memory of deceased beloved and kept in sacred space or used in ritual or ceremony