Broom Making

Broom Making

In a glen, in a hollow,
in dusk's blackened dell
Where the wind whispers fragments
of hexes, and spells

A black portly cauldron
sets boiling its brew
And around dancing hunchback
Are hags, crones, and shrews

In a field close by
Filled with hay, oats and wheat
Grown green in the summer
Dried gold in the heat

Where thieving hands gather
A crop that doesn’t belong
The farmer will wake to see
His pickings half gone

As old knuckles harvest
with a swoosh with a sweep
and gather the reeds
grown long past knee deep

And they’re clumped and they’re bound with
twine tight around
and a branch fashioned strait
to sturdy her weight           
with a dance and a spell
incantation from hell
and a sprinkling of potion
to set things in motion                           
on Hallow”s Eve night
the brooms take to flight

On a breath on a breeze
on a bat’s high trapeze
when strange shadows strewn
eclipse the full moon
Not a man not a face
but a hag in his place
smiles down on the night
when the witches make brooms

-Jennifer Murphy 2005