Larry O'Brien - Editor

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All Souls’ Day    First appeared in Comstock Review Those in purgatory cannot pray for themselves. They are beyond choice, the priest still proclaims in my mind, as I drive toward the graveyard through cathedrals of maples, their leaves staining golden my watery windshield. Halloween’s pumpkins slump on door steps. Ghosts knotted on branches droop like wet laundry, more forlorn than my real ghosts, who crowd, once more, the shores of the dead. Do not neglect them, we were told. Remember their joy of life, their yearning for salvation. Enter their names in the roll of the dead. On my right, the acrylic red of a burning bush startles my eye. On my left, the cemetery is all water color, wet grays and pale yellows. Crows scold from ruined trees. My father’s stone is new, my mother’s name engraved below, anticipating. Father, I pray for your soul to take wing. Father, pray for your son, who still does not know where he is going, nor his right hand from his left.