The Witch Series

Crone Song

My face is a hex                     

made of clouds                       

rapidly passing.

These hands betray,               

and always pay                      

what the cards tell them.

Where is the beak that can peck away at sorrow?

My knees are a jinx

crusted and frozen

over, leaving me

rooted and tree slow.

These feet search

floor after floor          

for the path

that will lead me

to what must be said.

What chain opens up grief’s damper,

so its terrible vapors can fly?

A vestigial tail

at the base of my spine,

wags at the prospect of relief.

My mouth unlocks

in harmony.

The Witch Series

Book of Shadows

Her book. This book,

spanning all the time she’s been allotted.

All of them neatly folded and tucked

between two of its pages –

Father, so long Dad,

so long, his legs, his darkness,

hang(s) out bookmarking gloom.

All of it yellowed by beer,

river water running under the bridge

as he hurled himself down and slipped under.

Mother, hello Mother, saying goodbye,

her phantom breast, its tumor shadowing

a line across her chest. Her kitchen simmering

with delicious mystery, kindnesses from

strange men, her wild waitress friends.

Their separation, the chasms it multiplied --

his family’s disapproval, their withdrawal,

the brittle crackling facts of abandonment.

Catholic school, Sister This, Father That,

their stories about martyrs 
bloodying page after page,

the few teachers who took 
an interest in her, the poetry

she wrote, a string of A pluses 
strung up like prayer flags.

Witches she knew and admired.

Witches she loved and feared.

Animal familiars. Animal tutors and chaperones.

Dogs and cats, foxes, hares, elks, bears, elephants,

her fear of mice. Crows, always crows 
disposing of carrion, gathering 
shiny things, squawking at the moon.

Then the rituals, her intentions

floating away from her,

seeding the future, her hands tying knots

for stability, a candle burning against

the wall, the flash of residual ashes

that let her let go, Loved ones on

moonlit nights, as they hung

from high branches,

twisting on the breeze,

tiny outlines of dollies

bearing messages

to the underworld,

litanies of hope, yearning,

praise and blessed be.

Little parcels weighed down

by rocks underground,

what needed or wanted burying.

Spells for babies wanted by friends, for babies

who had to be given back before birth,

love spells, sweet mingling of cells 
as they decompose, healing 
tokens of friendship and admiration, 
talismans for courage or protection,

planted in tree trunks around her house,

spells chanted over water, over food to

enhance its nourishment, over little heads

while they’re fast asleep, spells to ease the body,

lift it away from pain.

All her optimism and acceptance tucked into

this book’s many leaves, her life a wheel

turned by the earth’s steady compass.

She can feel herself growing lighter,

as the shadows take on weight.

The wildness, the weediness in her,

the roots reaching out from between

its pages, all of it flimsy and fleeting.

The sun moves across each day

in a woman’s life, leaving behind

this dance of dark upon light.

It feels to her like enough.

                         

The Witch Series

               Collage by Romare Bearden

Conjure Woman

She’s got them all teetering on

the tips of her fingers, tiny as mice.

One flip of the wrist and all the men,

who ever tasted her; then turned 

their faces away, and all the men,

who drove them to ruination, 

go flying to who knows 

where, and who cares?

She holds them up in yellow

curtain light, watches them shift

their weight to keep from falling.

Each one of them knows what he’s

done or not done. It’s chilling them

to the bone to see she’s wearing her

haint blue dress. No more feathers,

no Adam and Eve root. That’s how

very much danger they’re in.

Outside, her bottle tree glistens,

as she squeezes them for good measure,

rolls them between her palms, before

laying them out like sardines

in the bottom of her reddest meanest box.

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.

The Witch series

                                             Drawing by Rima Staines
Nana
 
Her voice curdled milk, her words hatcheting

the air around us, as we sat, big contemplative
lumps around the TV. She, the antithesis of ennui,
couldn't see the cloud hanging over us.
Forget sympathy. Too many things needed doing, 
shadows and creepings everywhere.

She put hexes on our father, for making too little,

and spending too much at the gin mill,

gave our mother venomous handouts,

drove her ashen with vexation,

cleaned our filthy house,

breathing incantations, rag in hand,

poking around with the vacuum wand,

spraying us all with Windex, and condemnation.

Only the baby was innocent.

To babies she was a smoocher, a laugher,

all goodness and light. At two it was all over;

they turned rogue, like the rest of us.

No candy houses to tempt us into cooperation.

Only vinegar, spitfire, a daily poison mushroom

to toughen body and spirit, a list of standards

that flew like a flag from the rooftop,

and orders barked out by the hour,

with a minute hand’s patience.

If we didn’t jump, she was a stubby cyclone,

doing whatever it was herself, then calling us

names until we wanted to hurt her too,

to startle her into silence, until she threatened

to put her head in the oven unless we let up.

She pushed, and we pushed back, until she went

blind at the sight of us. Then we haunted her

like the ghosts we’d become, howling with
laughter as she went about her rituals, sewing
God knows what into our clothes, as she 
did the mending, stirring the steaming
cauldron, or wielding her broom.

The Witch Series

Ritual Against Separation

Take one of her leopard

print high heels, and one of his

long seldom worn dress shoes.

Hang them out the bedroom window

on the extra clothesline from the shed,

so they dance in the breeze.

Once a week, pull them up, hand over hand,

so you can stuff more hair into each toe box,

hair you’ve been collecting from his hairbrush,

her hairbrush, stuffing his into her shoe,

hers into his, then lint from each of their

sweaters, and any loose threads you can pull

when you hang their wash on the line.

Each time, lower them down

a little closer to the bushes limning

the house, until you see a swirl of

grass beginning, soon mosses

and feathers too, mingling

with parental flotsam, each shoe

transformed into an aerie house

for tiny eggs that will give birth

to baby birds, all beak and need,

their cries a tenderness, a sun burst,

a glitter cascade, almost unbearable

in the fullness of its gladness.

Watch the parents guard them,

feed them, and teach them

how to fly, their larger bodies

dipping below, and bumping up

the smaller, until the currents catch

them and they glide. Call your

father Carolina Wren, House 

Sparrow, Nuthatch, call your mother his

mate. Tie the ropes in a triple

knot, and hope for the best.