THE AUTUMN WITCHING HILL

Just crowned, her first day as queen.

They bow to her.

With bare feet and silk gown staining,

she flees faraway 

to where untamed roots give rise

to impossible beauties.

She requests the counsel she needs.  

Tinder tangles into an ordinary brass key

that she swallows.

It tastes of smoldering seeds.

With no court watching

she drinks slanted sunlight,

gilded sky,

burnished hills,

the goddess tea of crisp gold grass.  

Her confusion ebbs.

Bent by heavenly gusts

she bows

to a pocket of slight stems

crowned by florid stars. She listens.

She leaps and picks.

Her choice:

Wind in trees

above fame and jewels,

birdspeech over wished-for youth.

Her people are best served

by what is real.

This, she decides, is her creative will.  

Yet why make proclamation

when her woman’s nature is to invoke?

Inspiration is her way.

The wind blows and takes her hair,

she turns to autumn copper.

The earth takes and decomposes her name.

Her soul turns to soil, the two indistinguishable.

Now she knows.

She is sunbeam much more than she is queen.

Now she chooses—

Not to be revered royalty

but to be witched and revere.