I Saw Winter's Witches

--Tricia Knoll

More than one, those scraggly black locusts

lining the gravel road to the white farmhouse

and a collapsing barn. Barren: winter unveils

twisted fingers of eerie malaise

planted for fenceposts rumored to

last longer than stone. Suckering up

as toxic clones that scratch wicked

turns of withered phrases on pewter sky.

That fence hems the pasture, last

effort to contain the emptiness

of a low sun setting on fallow pasture. If

winter witch seems too fanciful, 

thorns too cruel, wind too stiff to break,

remember locusts’ white droops

beguile honeybees in soft seasons –

witches hide in green leaf-ery.