The Witch Series

Effigies

Dolls for stubbornness, their

heads made of smooth river stone.

Dolls for finding water, with

long dowser legs and splintered feet.

Dolls for snagging memories,

in teasel heads and little burr hands.

Nut eyes, leaf wings, bark body, red leaf fire

Dolls bound head to toe with string,

to make a lover cleave and cling.

Dolls sitting in little boats

spiriting nuisance people away.

Dolls full of pins, their

crisscross faces in pain.

A white shell face, wild grass hair, a toadstool bed

Straw dolls with their hair on fire

turning all worry to ash in the wind.

Wrap a doll safe in a mullein leaf, tuck in

milkweed seeds and a child returns from fever.

Nail a doll to a tree and watch grief twist in pain,

go brittle and crumble; each tiny loss a bit of letting go.

The Witch Series

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Mirror Spell

You are a shape-shifter

and a storyteller.

You have spent many nights as crow

or snail or leaf waving in the wind,

for you are changeable and unafraid.

You have been hurt many times, oh, yes,

wrecked and ravaged, and then set free.

Your relatives think you crowd a room,

though you feel yourself tiny and bee-like.

Your heart’s ease sprouts from

the pine needled floor of the forest.

You can conjure love for every being,

whether flesh bound, leaf adorned,

petaled, antennaed or furred.

You carry every kiss, every compliment,

every lightening you ever walked away with,

in a little suitcase behind your eyelids.

Right now, you are long overdue

for a voyage on waves of bliss.

Just write your desires across the sky

in the swiftly moving alphabet of birds.