Witches

rustling about in the hedges and the roots
the witches do not know they yearn for god:
not the gods of churches who molest them, but
the god of prostitutes and mothers, the god
who wept with bereaved sisters, who rescued
the adulterer and the widow, who dined
laughing with the whores and their clientele
whose feet, perfumed by an unrequited lover

tread dark paths toward a tortured end:

hate men, perhaps, or the evil in their loins
but children of the earth cannot but help
to long for their heartbroken creator
even as they spin webs to scandalize his name.


9/24/23