The Halloween Witch

The decorations are out there. Lots of wrinkly, green women in pointy hats. A friend asked me to post this  tonight and this full moon is as good as any time, so here it is, written about 18 years ago:

The Halloween Witch

Each year they parade her about, the traditional Halloween
Witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, a toothless mouth beneath
her deformed nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting from a
bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs. Most think this abject
image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature.

I disagree, I believe this to be how Witches were really seen. Consider that
most Witches were women, were abducted in the night, and smuggled into dungeons
or prisons under the secrecy of darkness to be presented by light of day as a
confessed Witch. Few if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged
into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until
she confessed to anything suggested to her and to give names or what ever would
stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a
self-proclaimed Witch. As the Witch was paraded through town en route to be
burned, hanged, drowned, stoned or disposed of in various other forms of
Christian love all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body, the
jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of torture.

The face bruised and broken by countless blows bore a hue of sickly green. The
once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth and torn
gums that leers beneath a battered disfigured nose. The disheveled hair conceals
bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely
tresses. Broken twisted hands clutched the wagon for support, fractured fingers
with nails torn away locked like groping claws to steady her broken body. All
semblance of humanity gone this was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a Witch.

I revere this Halloween Crone and hold her sacred above all. I honor her courage
and listen to her warnings of the dark side of man. Each year I shed tears of
respect when the mundane exhibit their symbol of Christian love.

poetry by angel © 1993