Halloween Witch

 Halloween Witch
 
Each year they parade her about,
 the traditional Halloween Witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair,
 a toothless mouth beneath her deformed nose.
 Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw'
 protracting from a bent and twisted torso
 that lurches about on wobbly legs.

 Most think this abject image
 to be the creation of a prejudiced mind
 or merely a Halloween caricature.
 I disagree, I believe this to be how Witches were really  seen.

 Consider that most Witches:
 were women,
 were abducted in the night,
 and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under
 the  secrecy of darkness
 to be presented by light of day
 as a confessed Witch.

 Few if any saw a frightened normal looking  woman
being dragged into a secret room filled with
 instruments of torture,
 to be questioned until she confessed to
 anything
 suggested to her and to give names or what  ever
 would stop the questions.
 Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world
 as a self-proclaimed Witch.

 As the Witch was paraded through town
 en route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned
or disposed of in various other forms of
 Christian  love all created to free and save her soul
 from her
 depraved body the jeering crowds viewed the
 results of hours of torture.

 The face bruised and broken by countless  blows
 bore  a hue of sickly green.
 The once warm and loving smile gone
 replaced by a grimace of broken teeth and  torn gums
 that leers beneath a battered disfigured  nose.
 The disheveled hair conceals
 bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence
 cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses.
 Broken twisted hands clutched the wagon for  support,
 fractured fingers with nails torn away
 locked like groping claws to steady her broken body.

 All semblance of humanity gone
 this was truly a demon,
 a bride of Satan,
 a Witch.

 I revere this Halloween Crone
 and hold her sacred above all.
 I honor her courage and listen to her
 warnings of the
 dark side of man.
 Each year I shed tears of respect
 when the mundane exhibit their symbol of
 Christian  love.
 
      angel © 6-26-99
        Petals & Thorns
 poetry by angel © 1993 - 1999