Moraine

there is a witch
in the kettles, whose house
is in a subtle glen.
she brews
in a lakebed cauldron
and picks her teeth
with arrowheads. she only
emerges in the fall, summer
too humid for her toadskin,
winter too dry
for her warts.
she is pale when she rises
from the mud,
’til she sucks color
from the leaves.
the hikers don’t know
she makes the world
yellow, and if they did
I reckon
they’d think it was a gift,
and not just a hunger
for green flesh.
                        sometimes
she scuttles
out to the road,
when a truck careens
and kills a deer
and she cuts
it open with her teeth
and reads the rutting entrails.

moths beat on her windows,
fluttering
their wings on the frames
and bloodying their heads
on the panes.

oh leaves, oh leaves
she hums,
your mothers grieve.
oh leaves, oh leaves
she sings.
cold winter comes—
I’ve got to leave.

so she hikes back down
to her coven hole
and sleeps
to the sound of snowflakes