I love old urban legends about ancient laws,

like how it used to be three or more unmarried 

women sharing space constituted a coven.

My classroom is full of outlaws, brilliant young women

living just to drive Witchfinders to a frenzy. 

The girls are smiling! The girls are writing! The girls

have opinions, and thoughts and, oh such,  feelings!

(Those Witchfinders, man. What a bunch of assholes, right?)

I’m bewitched by them, I’m sure of it, because I 

cannot think of any better way to be than 

ensnared by the spell they weave in their poetry.

Each stirs the pot in her own way, but watch the one 

who sits by the window. I’ve seen her gathering 

herbs in the garden of her mind and picking the flowers

that grow tall in the wild, endless fields within. 

She bring baskets of riotous color, and she

laughs her laugh and makes others laugh too, peeling bells,

and throws the components in the cauldron so the girls

might cast their spell. The light refracts through her, colors like

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so rich right in the midst of the wood, where the scent 

lingers in the darkness between the trees, and you’re 

not sure if it is the bark or the fruit. She walks 

there sometimes, chasing the dogs, playing hide and seek 

with songbirds, until she’s tired at forest’s edge, 

where the wild trees thin, and the air smells of the

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grove. There is more space between the arbor there, and 

she turns cartwheels in the wide avenues under 

the star-shaped blooms that drift down from above. Voices 

carry through the grove, but whether it’s wanderers 

or her own echo, she has never really known, 

or cared, because after the spinning and dancing, 

she runs until she reaches the broad field of young

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and falls, laughing, tired in its arms. Precious little 

florets hold her like the softest blankets, and she 

can’t believe anyone would call them a weed. They 

thrive, they survive, anywhere they lay down to seed, 

just like her. It is early in the spring, and the 

pollinators buzz and flutter above the bed.

Later, flowers turn to little cotton seed heads, 

to be carried by wind, out over the endless

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ocean, calm (for now, for she’s seen the spray and spit 

of raging, rainy storms there before), and below 

silver schools below shimmer as they twist and turn, 

avoiding the dolphins, who squeal with glee at the 

chase. They leap, punctuating the sargasso. See her, 

climbing high and away from the waves, into a 

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sky. Held aloft on the breeze, gliding through thermals, 

she sees the known world, and it could be hers for the 

taking even though she’d never take something by 

force or threats or cruelty or greed. Now, skyward,

the warm sun transit above her, tiring of noon 

slouching towards horizon. It will be dark soon, 

and her basket is not full. She gambols towards 

a distant shore, and there she touches down in the 

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where the rows stretch away into the dark and wind 

that carried her carries on to tease and shake the

dark cypress trees. This journey ends, for now, with a 

dance through Provence, where the flowers follow her and 

the maritime salt scent that lingers in her wake. 

She coaxes a few close, clips them, and calls soft thanks 

to each one collected for the cauldron, and when 

at last she lets herself rest, when she closes her eyes,

She works her spell now, combining all the gathered

colors in the special way only she knows. They 

twist round one another and merge and meld and blend 

and they should get so much darker together, but, 

no, they glow, it grows, and the potion is bright like

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the true color of sunlight, unfiltered, 30,000 lux

shining because she makes it shine. For, after all,

the spell she knows the best of all: illuminate 

the room, and illuminate the people there too.