Two Witch Poems
fiction by Carrie Frye
Witch’s Lament
why ain’t you used them,
he asked, and i said i was saving
them for something special
—a big moon, maybe,
a summons with my sisters—
and he didn’t like that
and it came on me sudden
that he didn’t like the newts either,
even if they did him no harm,
slopping in their bowl under the window,
green and slick and smooth
in the water, but i liked them, liked
the splash they made when i was lying
in bed in the evening,
the little dudes gassing it up
at midnight, and in truth that’s why
i hadn’t used them (only borrowed the eyes
off one), i’d gotten fond,
liked how they were small and fat
as fingers, and how when I took one out
and he’d curl in my hand i
could feel the thump of his tiny heart
on my palm and his tail at my wrist
was like something private
told between friends and i’d dream
at my window of all we’d do
someday, these newts and me,
what purple magic we’d cook up,
but theirs was the best bowl, he said,
the biggest, and he tripped on it,
and how could he sleep with the plonk
and splash of them in the night,
the wriggling creeped him out,
made him think of death, you could see,
and so i took them down to the pond,
and tipped the bowl in the grass and
they slopped out, the little dudes
in the dim grass and the purple light
and they slipped their way
back through the silver mirror
of the water without one look
at me (even if the blind one
wasn’t able) and then i walked
back through the dark where
nothing knew me anymore.
Keep us breathing fire!
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