The Thin Museum
Verse by William Dennis
Paintings by Michael Guinn
Gallery 4
The Barrens Witch Old, blind Tom down the tavern, alongside the ditch,
while he smokes and his voice has no range, for the rest of your drink, he will make up a song and the longer they grow, the more strange. Though he's common and rough and a lot like this song, his rough, rusty old voice can bewitch. Didn't John have the prettiest wife in New Jersey, with hair that shone black like her eyes? Back when she was his bride and he her new groom, all their arguments ended in sighs. It provoked him though, blackly, how other men looked, all the time when his wife would walk past; how she'd saunter the slower, half dropping behind, when he thought that she ought to walk fast. Small boy children turned sick the whilst she was around; one-eyed tomcats on fences would fight. Milkmaids churned themselves faint, to make butter from cream, but it never would separate right. "All yer young men 're like ‘at," was all that she said. "An’ them tom cats is, too," she would add. "Girls kin sour th’ milk by the look on their face, if they churns when they're jealous 'r mad. "You kin name me a witch now, an' call me tongue sharp, an' frown like some new-furrowed field; but still what y’ say's magic, y’ once thought was charm; I recall you was happy to yield. "An' sure I don't admit what I never denied about powers f' good or fer ill, but blame-castin's comm'ner th’n spell-castin' be, and the wishin's more usual than will. "An' so what if they's witches that lives hereabouts? Sure, they couldn't give half a the hurt that gets done by good doctors an' sittin' in church by them ones that don't never touch dirt. "It might be you'll meet up with some handsome young witch who kin make you to jig to her tune." She stared straight through poor John with those blackberry eyes, till he couldn't tell midnight from noon. John would stay after market and Wednesday night prayers, till he felt almost home at an inn. Thought he never remembered a serving maid's face, like the preacher, he thought about sin. Walking home through the barrens, he peered in the marsh, while the katydids sang a strange song, and two blackberry eyes stared him back while his heart thumped his chest till it rang like a gong. So to shout his head clear, he cried, "Lord, I'm bewitcht," but a woman's hand led him away. And right there, in the darkness, she forced him to dance in the swamp through the night till the day. And the bullfrogs boomed laughter whenever he went by pale light of the moon or by dark, as with never a miss, try to hide though he would, her quick hand and black eyes found their mark. An acquaintance at chapel, who knew about witches, did offer him canny advice: "You c'd bridle ‘er soul, 'n then you'd be the master. It's better y're strong than y're nice." That's why, under his coat, good John hid right away a soft headstall and shank made of rope. Then next night, jogging home, when he felt his hand took, single-handed he grabbed his last hope. And as quick as a wink and as neat as a cap, in blind dark, John just slapped his rope halter up over the head of a pretty, black pony, stock still as the rock of Gibralter. With a handful of mane on her un-saddled back, as she bolted off straight through the pines, him with naught but a lead-shank to turn her head round, they at last caught in belly-deep vines. By the crack of the dawn, as he led the horse home, John made out from a glimpse of her hoof, that the pony ran bareback and barefoot as well so he turned at the farrier's roof. As the forge was aglow, the first shoe got shaped quick, and it hissed like a snake in the tub. The black pony stood wide-eyed and fixed in cross-ties with the rope halter's lead for one snub. When the smith set the shoe on her raised left, hind hoof, with his pritzel to burn in the clips, didn’t the pony collapse with a scream on the floor that might come from a hurt woman's lips? Though the smith startled back, John dropped down by his wife where she lay in the muck and the straw, wearing nary a stitch but a mane of black hair and the smith, not a talker, said, "Gaw!" In a borrowed horse blanket, John picked up his wife, and rushed home with her cries in his ears. She was naught in his arms to the weight on his soul. "Dear, I knowed it was you," burst through tears. "I was jealous and proud, and, oh, look what I done!" and for two weeks he nursed her in bed. For a month after that he helped her to hobble and mildly did just what she said. So she walked with a limp, that she said didn’t hurt, but he carried the hurt in his heart. And he gave up the tavern and quit on the church and stayed home and made love in the dark. Well, the farming got done; they both worked at it hard, what with each of them finishing some. In time John lost his hair and his wife turned full grey, and the children, they never did come. At last John was laid down for the earth to take back, and a parson cast in a few words. As his wife turned to start on her halting way home, from old graves she flushed up a few birds. In the night coal-sack clouds were dragged over the moon till the pines blended in with the sky. In the graveyard the sound of a hoof striking stone was the only sign something passed by. Some black shape by the mound where John lay in the ground stamped and blew like a horse...or the breeze, and some other thing rose, gave a pat on its nose, and got back a brief snort or a sneeze. Then the graveyard was empty, except for the sound of quick hoof-beats fast growing less near, and no more has been heard of old John or that horse that ran lame on one hoof in the rear. |
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This To MeFramed by woman's shape, my life once looked like this to me;
the world, all sketched essentials, yawned like an abyss to me. Un-blended colors, elemental shapes, seemed basic truth; discovering what you were, not who, now seems remiss to me. They sold a lot of black and blue acrylic paint, back then; Plato's forms, all light and dark, seemed not amiss to me. Young man's fancy feels more like an alien landscape, now, than history's crumb and memory's swirl make your least kiss to me. In coal mine dark, I know you by a single finger's touch; your mixed particulars are all familiar bliss to me. History, Bill, all your history focuses her form; filled shapes, warmed colors are what it means to reminisce to me. first published in The Ghazal Page (2012)
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