Babayaga

Witches’ Song One

Wait, wait, don’t rush past too fast,

such the busy bolting red squirrel, you there
scurrying around the hard, bare field, to what?
That there? That nettled haven of a hedge?
Careful, teeth may lie in those shadows too.
Glance back here first, through the tumble of time
yes, here, see that bundle of dirty laundry
stuffed now with so much useless flesh,
all spilled about to soil the pure snow,
with deep red blood, leaking free
from my cracked, hollowing husk,
as sisters and life all gallop away
with freshly stolen horses.

Mourning, lonely and lone as the black moon,

I trailed the four, trudging till I found my Lyda
wandering lost like some untethered blinking mule,
a sole specter dragging wet
along those rough timbered banks of ice,
the shoreline stacked with bleached stone and winter branches
as gray as my drained, dried veins.

Lyda was sputtering, spitting out scales,

already talking dumb as a dead fish.
I told her to come along and she came.

The trails of the dead plod on,

we never stop for feast or song,
following beneath winter’s skeleton trees,
our weight no greater than a hard frost’s whisperings.
We finally sensed Basha too, looming
invisible, sulking, and brooding,
her only substance the shade of darkness
that comes to murderous concentration.
Silent as slate, hear me say solemnly,
her ghost frightens even me.

So, some company I’ve got,

a river’s raw stew, a stomach’s turgid gas,
the two each saying nothing I can fathom
but poking, pointing, divining a path.
Lacking the firmness of fates, we are no more than
broken pianos, warped keys, shattered hammers,
our sheet music dancing off with the wind, blowing loose and bleak,
but we have our certain melody, yes, we do, don’t we?

See the girl meet the young man?

See the man meet the young man?
See the young man become what then?
Not yet? Maybe never?

All souls believe they make their own way

and spin out their path’s filament through bold free will
and yet we are the spiders, aren’t we, yes,
voracious and certain,
shuffling on, luring and stalking,
tracing out the perimeter
of those tautened spans.

Basha is the one guiding the way,

with the sure force of a cemetery’s gravity,
she and we go here and there
and then she stops from time to time
to softly seethe with hissing vipers, to hoot with shrewd owls,
and to whisper with other sapient creatures.
She is our vengeful matchmaker
all thoughts set fast
on village death.

There is a set point, a marked destination,

And while we cook, chop, and boil,
I cannot say what its flavor will be.
But watching our busy Lyda, helping too,
I’m fairly sure it will taste like fish.