Poem for the Earth

Catechism for a Witch’s Child
By J. L. Stanley

When they ask to see your gods,
Your book of prayers.

Show them the lines drawn delicately with veins
On the underside of a bird’s wing.

Tell them you believe in giant sycamores mottled
And stark against a winter sky in nights so frozen
Stars crack open spilling streams of molten ice to earth.

Tell them how you drank the holy wine of honeysuckle on a
Warm spring day and of the softness of your mother who
Never taught you death was life’s reward but who believed
In the earth and the sun and a million, million light years
Of being.