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.

Tuesday Poem: from The Water Series

The Sink

Luna visits the dying: house after house,

slowly yielding to tidal hunger,

all roof waver, and shingle warp,

like fish, someone caught and abandoned,

scales curled and lifted by the too hot sun,

smelling of woodrot, maggots and mildew,

windows gone cloudy and wall-eyed.

Doors darken from the waterline up.

One day, a whole section of wall

slides away and gulls hop in

for a once over. Then reeds push

through what steps were left intact.

A narrow dock holds fast to its

sodden pilings until it floats, like

Charon’s raft, off to the underworld.

Luna meditates on gradual decay;

what it leaves behind and what it takes away.