Sunless Morning

The morning of the 26th of September

all of the frost was in my teeth and hair.

I had it out the night before with a witch

who claimed to turn severed tails

into animal souls
and sodden cardboard into their bodies.

The nightwinds blew into howls
as she leaned her crooked back against

a big birch and sang to leaves as they fell.

I had my hands around a dead branch that had fallen

as she flicked her gnarled fingers through the air.

I kept saying This is Nature!

this is nature

not your stodgy incantations, frump

she just smiled and continued loosing letters

into the waning light of the moon.

This a fortune told, now this is a spell 

of some substance, this the talisman she held

above her head and thrust into the peeling bark:

orange wire wrapped around the notches of a cross,

the cross with a loop, copper and steel:

the ankh came from her fingers 

and stuck into the tree.

Cross a witch as she gilds a spirit and it will follow you.

The pine marten switches feet as it hops across the dirt,

I've been still, watching from the window a sunless morning,

watching as it hops along, tracing frost through soil

and leaving snow amid its tracks.